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The Ghosts 


AND OTHER 


LECTURES. 


BY 

rv9^ 

Robert G. Ingersoll. 

n 


The idea of immortality, that like a sea has ebbed and flowed in the 

HUMAN HEART, WITH ITS COUNTLESS WAVES OF HOPE AND FEAR, BEATING AGAINST 
THE SHORES AND ROCKS OF TIME AND FATE, WAS NOT BORN OF ANY BOOK, NOR OF 
ANY CREED, NOR OF ANY RELIGION. It WAS BORN OF HUMAN AFFECTION, AND IT WILL 
CON TINUE TO EBB AND FLOW BENEATH THE MISTS AND CLOUDS OF DOUBT AND DARK¬ 
NESS AS LONG AS LOVE KISSES THE LIPS OF DEATH. 


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WASHINGTON, D. C.: 

C. P. FARRELL, PUBLISHER, 

1879. 





» 


Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1878, by 
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL, 
in the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 


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Elbctkotyped by Blomgken Bhob. & Co. 



TO 

EBON C. INGERSOLL, 

MY BROTHER 

FROM WHOSE LIPS I HEARD THE FIRST APPLAUSE, 
AND WITH WHOSE NAME I WISH MY OWN 
ASSOCIATED UNTIL BOTH ARE 
FORGOTTEN, 

THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED. 




CONTENTS 


THE GHOSTS,.9 

Let the Ghosts Go. We will worship them no more. Let 

THEM COVER THEIR EYELESS SOCKETS WITH THEIR FLESH- 

less Hands and fade forever from the Imaginations 
of Men. 

” HE LIBERTY OF MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD, - 73 

Liberty sustains the same relation to Mind that Space does 
to Matter. 

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, - - 145 

One Hundred Years Ago our Fathers Retired the Gods 
from Politics. 

» 

ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS, - - - - 181 

To Plow is To Pray —To Plant is To Prophecy, and the 

Harvest Answers and Fulfills. 

SPEECH AT CINCINNATI, - - - - - - 221 

Nominating James G. Blaine for the Presidency, June, 1876. 

THE PAST RISES BEFORE ME LIKE A DREAM, 229 

Extract from a Speech delivered at the Soldiers’ Reunion 
at Indianapolis, Sept. 21, 1876. 




I 




PREFACE. 


These lectures have been so maimed and muti¬ 
lated by orthodox malice; have been made to 
appear so halt, crutched and decrepit by those who 
mistake the pleasures of calumny for the duties of 
religion, that in simple justice to myself I concluded 
to publish them. 

Most of the clergy are, or seem to be, utterly 
incapable of discussing anything in a fair and 
catholic spirit. They appeal, not to reason, but to 
prejudice ; not to facts, but to passages of scripture. 
They can conceive of no goodness, of no spiritual 
exaltation beyond the horizon of their creed. Who¬ 
ever differs with them upon what they are pleased 
to call “fundamental truths,” is, in their opinion, a 
base and infamous man. To re-enact the tragedies 
of the Sixteenth Century, they lack only the power. 
Bigotry in all ages has been the same. Christianity 
simply transferred the brutality of the Colosseum to 



ii 


PREFACE. 


the Inquisition. For the murderous combat of the 
gladiators, the saints substituted the auto de fe. 
What has been called religion is, after all, but the 
organization of the wild beast in man. The per¬ 
fumed blossom of arrogance is Heaven. Hell is 
the consummation of revenge. 

The chief business of the clergy has always 
been to destroy the joy of life, and multiply and 
magnify the terrors and tortures of death and per¬ 
dition. They have polluted the heart and paralyzed 
the brain; and upon the ignorant altars of the Past 
and the Dead, they have endeavored to sacrifice 
the Present and the Living. 

Nothing can exceed the mendacity of the reli¬ 
gious press. I have had some little experience 
with political editors, and am forced to say, that un¬ 
til I read the religious papers, I did not know what 
malicious and slimy falsehoods could be constructed 
from ordinary words. The ingenuity with which 
the real and apparent meaning can be tortured out 
of language, is simply amazing. The average re¬ 
ligious editor is intolerant and insolent; he knows 
nothing of affairs; he has the envy of failure, the 
malice of impotence, and always accounts for the 
brave and generous actions of unbelievers, by lowf 
base and unworthy motives. 



PREFACE. 


\ 

By this time, even the clergy should know that 
the intellect of the Nineteenth Century needs no 
guardian. They should cease to regard themselves 
as shepherds defending flocks of weak, silly and 
fearful sheep from the claws and teeth of ravening 
wolves. By this time they should know that the 
religion of the ignorant and brutal Past no longer 
satisfies the heart and brain; that the miracles have 
become contemptible; that the “evidences” have 
ceased to convince; that the spirit of Investigation 
cannot be stopped nor stayed; that the Church is 
losing her power; that the young are holding in a 
kind of tender contempt the sacred follies of the 
old ; that the pulpit and pews no longer represent 
the culture and morality of the world, and that the 
brand of intellectual inferiority is upon the ortho¬ 
dox brain. 

Men should be liberated from the aristocracy of 
the air. Every chain of superstition should be 
broken. The rights of men and women should be 
equal and sacred — marriage should be a perfect 
partnership — children should be governed by kind¬ 
ness,— every family should b'e a republic — every 
fireside a democracy. 

It seems almost impossible for religious people 



iv 


PREFACE. 


to really grasp the idea of intellectual freedom. 
They seem to think that man is responsible for his 
honest thoughts; that unbelief is a crime; that in¬ 
vestigation is sinful; that credulity is a virtue, and 
that reason is a dangerous guide. They cannot 
divest themselves of the idea that in the realm of 
thought there must be government — authority and 
obedience—laws and penalties — rewards and pun¬ 
ishments, and that somewhere in the universe there 
is a penitentiary for the soul. 

In the republic of mind, one is a majority. 
There, all are monarchs, and all are equals. The 
tyranny of a majority even is unknown. Each one 
is crowned, sceptered and throned. Upon every 
brow is the tiara, and around every form is the im¬ 
perial purple. Only those are good citizens who 
express their honest thoughts, and those who per¬ 
secute for opinion’s sake, are the only traitors. 
There, nothing is considered infamous except an 
appeal to brute force, and nothing sacred but love, 
liberty, and joy. The church contemplates this 
republic with a sneer. From the teeth of. hatred 
she draws back the lips of scorn. She is filled 
with the spite and spleen born of intellectual weak¬ 
ness. Once she was egotistic; now she is envious. 



PREFACE. 


Once she wore upon her hollow breast false gems, 
supposing them to be real. They have been shown 
to be false, but she wears them still. She has the 
malice of the caught, the hatred of the exposed. 

We are told to investigate the bible for our¬ 
selves, and at the same time informed that if we 
come to the conclusion that it is not the inspired 
word of God, we will most assuredly be damned. 
Under such circumstances, if we believe this, inves¬ 
tigation is impossible. Whoever is held responsible 
for his conclusions cannot weigh the evidence with 
impartial scales. Fear stands at the balance, and 
gives to falsehood the weight of its trembling hand. 

I oppose the Church because she is the enemy 
of liberty ; because her dogmas are infamous and 
cruel; because she humiliates and degrades 
woman; because she teaches the doctrines of eter¬ 
nal torment and the natural depravity of man; be¬ 
cause she insists upon the absurd, the impossible, 
and the senseless; because she resorts to falsehood 
and slander; because she is arrogant and revenge¬ 
ful ; because she allows men to sin on a credit; be¬ 
cause she discourages self-reliance, and laughs at 
good works; because she believes in vicarious vir¬ 
tue and vicarious vice — vicarious punishment and 




VI 


PREFACE. 


vicarious reward; because she regards repentance 
of more importance than restitution, and because 
she sacrifices the world we have to one we know 
not of. 

The free and generous, the tender and affec¬ 
tionate, will understand me. Those who have 
escaped from the grated cells of a creed will appre¬ 
ciate my motives. The sad and suffering wives, 
the trembling and loving children will thank me : 
This is enough. 

Robert G. Ingersoll. 

Washington, D. 

April 13, 1878. 




THE GHOSTS. 






THE GHOSTS. 


Let them cover their Eyeless Sockets with their 
Fleshless Hands and fade forever from the 

IMAGINATION OF MEN. 



HERE are three theories by which men 


account for all phenomena, for everything 
that happens: First, the Supernatural; Second, 
the Supernatural and Natural; Third, the Natural. 
Between these theories there has been, from the 
dawn of civilization, a continual conflict. In this 
great war, nearly all the soldiers have been in the 
ranks of the supernatural. The believers in the 
supernatural insist that matter is controlled and 
directed entirely by powers from without; while 
naturalists maintain that Nature acts from within; 
that Nature is not acted upon; that the universe is 
all there is; that Nature with infinite arms em¬ 
braces everything that exists, and that all supposed 
powers beyond the limits of the material are 



10 


THE GHOSTS. 


simply ghosts. You say, “Oh, this is materialism!” 
What is matter? I take in my hand some earth:— 
in this dust put seeds. Let the arrows of light 
from the quiver of the sun smite upon it; let the 
rain fall upon it. The seeds will grow and a plant 
will bud and blossom. Do you understand this? 
Can you explain it better than you can the produc¬ 
tion of thought? Have you the slightest conception 
of what it really is ? And yet you speak of matter 
as though acquainted with its origin, as though 
you had torn from the clenched hands of the rocks 
the secrets of material existence. Do you know 
what force is ? Can you account for molecular 
action? Are you really familiar with chemistry, 
and can you account for the loves and hatreds of 
the atoms? Is there not something in matter that 
forever eludes? After all, can you get beyond, 
above or below appearances ? Before you cry 
“ materialism! ” had you not better ascertain what 
matter really is ? Can you think even of anything 
without a material basis ? Is it possible to imagine 
the annihilation of a single atom? Is it possible 
for you to conceive of the creation of an atom? 
Can you have a thought that was not suggested 
to you by what you call matter? 



THE GHOSTS. 


11 


Our fathers denounced materialism, and ac¬ 
counted for all phenomena by the caprice of gods 
and devils. 

For thousands of years it was believed that 
ghosts, good and bad, benevolent and malignant, 
weak and powerful, in some mysterious way, pro¬ 
duced all phenomena; that disease and health, 
happiness and misery, fortune and misfortune, 
peace and war, life and death, success and failure, 
were but arrows from the quivers of these ghosts; 
that shadowy phantoms rewarded and punished 
mankind; that they were pleased and displeased 
by the actions of men; that they sent and withheld 
the snow, the light, and the rain; that they blessed 
the earth with harvests or cursed it with famine; 
that they fed or starved the children of men; that 
they crowned and uncrowned kings; that they took 
sides in war; that they controlled the winds; that 
they gave prosperous voyages, allowing the brave 
mariner to meet his wife and child inside the harbor 
bar, or sent the storms, strewing the sad shores 
with wrecks of ships and the bodies of men. 

Formerly, these ghosts were believed to be 
almost innumerable. Earth, air, and water were 
filled with these phantom hosts. In modern times 



12 


THE GHOSTS. 


they have greatly decreased in number, because 
the second theory,— a mingling of the supernatural 
and natural,— has generally been adopted. The 
remaining ghosts, however, are supposed to per¬ 
form the same offices as the hosts of yore. 

It has always been believed that these ghosts 
could in some way be appeased; that they could be 
flattered by sacrifices, by prayer, by fasting, by the 
building of temples and cathedrals, by the blood 
of men and beasts, by forms and ceremonies, by 
chants, by kneelings and prostrations, by flagella¬ 
tions and maimings, by renouncing the joys of 
home, by living alone in the wide desert, by the 
practice of celibacy, by inventing instruments of 
torture, by destroying men, women and children, 
by covering the earth with dungeons, by burning 
unbelievers, by putting chains upon the thoughts 
and manacles upon the limbs of men, by believing 
things without evidence and against evidence, by 
disbelieving and denying demonstration, by despis¬ 
ing facts, by hating reason, by denouncing liberty, 
by maligning heretics, by slandering the dead, by 
subscribing to senseless and cruel creeds, by dis¬ 
couraging investigation, by worshiping a book, by 
the cultivation of credulity, by observing certain 



THE GHOSTS. 


13 


times and days, by counting beads, by gazing at 
crosses, by hiring others to repeat verses and 
prayers, by burning candles and ringing bells, by 
enslaving each other and putting out the eyes of 
the soul. All this has been done to appease and 
flatter these monsters of the air. 

In the history of our poor world, no horror has 
been omitted, no infamy has been left undone by 
the believers in ghosts,—by the worshipers of these 
fleshless phantoms. And yet these shadows were 
born of cowardice and malignity. They were 
painted by the pencil of fear upon the canvas of 
ignorance by that artist called superstition. 

From these ghosts, our fathers received infor¬ 
mation. They were the schoolmasters of our ances¬ 
tors. They were the scientists and philosophers, 
the geologists, legislators, astronomers, physicians, 
metaphysicians and historians of the past. For 
ages these ghosts were supposed to be the only 
source of real knowledge. They inspired men to 
write books, and the books were considered sacred. 
If facts were found to be inconsistent with these 
books, so much the worse for the facts, and 
especially for their discoverers. It was then, and 
still is, believed that these books are the basis of 



14 


THE GHOSTS. 


the idea of immortality; that to give up these 
volumes, or rather the idea that they are inspired, 
is to renounce the idea of immortality. This I 
deny. 

The idea of immortality, that like a sea has 
ebbed and flowed in the human heart, with its 
countless waves of hope and fear, beating against 
the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not born 
of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any religion. 
It was born of human affection, and it will continue 
to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of 
doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips 
of death. It is the rainbow — Hope shining upon 
the tears of grief. 

From the books written by the ghosts we have 
at last ascertained that they knew nothing about 
the world in which we live. Did they know 
anything about the next! Upon every point 
where contradiction is possible, they have been 
contradicted. 

By these ghosts, by these citizens of the air, 
the affairs of government were administered; all 
authority to govern came from them. The emper¬ 
ors, kings and potentates all had commissions from 
these phantoms. Man was not considered as the 



THE GHOSTS. 


15 


source of any power whatever. To rebel against 
the king was to rebel against the ghosts, and 
nothing less than the blood of the offender could 
appease the invisible phantom or the visible tyrant. 
Kneeling- was the proper position to be assumed 
by the multitude. The prostrate were the good. 
Those who stood erect were infidels and traitors. 
In the name and by the authority of the ghosts, 
man was enslaved, crushed, and plundered. The 
many toiled wearily in the storm and sun that the 
few favorites of the ghosts might live in idleness. 
The many lived in huts, and caves, and dens, that 
the few might dwell in palaces. The many covered 
themselves with rags, that the few might robe 
themselves in purple and in gold. The many 
crept, and cringed, and crawled, that the few might 
tread upon their flesh with iron feet. 

From the ghosts men received, not only author¬ 
ity, but information of every kind. They told us 
the form of this earth. They informed us that 
eclipses were caused by the sins of man; that the 
universe was made in six days; that astronomy, 
and geology were devices of wicked men, instigated 
by wicked ghosts; that gazing at the sky with a 
telescope was a dangerous thing; that digging into 



16 


THE GHOSTS. 


the earth was sinful curiosity; that trying to be 
wise above what they had written was born of a 
rebellious and irreverent spirit. 

They told us there was no virtue like belief, and 
no crime like doubt; that investigation was pure 
impudence, and the punishment therefor, eternal 
torment. They not only told us all about this 
world, but about two others; and if their state¬ 
ments about the other worlds are as true as about 
this, no one can estimate the value of their in¬ 
formation. 

For countless ages the world was governed by 
ghosts, and they spared no pains to change the 
eagle of the human intellect into a bat of darkness. 
To accomplish this infamous purpose; to drive the 
love of truth from the human heart; to prevent the 
advancement of mankind; to shut out from the 
world every ray of intellectual light; to pollute 
every mind with superstition, the power of kings, 
the cunning and cruelty of priests, and the wealth 
of nations were exhausted. 

During these years of persecution, ignorance, 
superstition and slavery, nearly all the people, the 
kings, lawyers, doctors, the learned and the un¬ 
learned, believed in that frightful production of 



THE GHOSTS. 


IT 


ignorance, fear, and faith, called witchcraft. They 
believed that man was the sport and prey of devils. 
They really thought that the very air was thick 
with these enemies of man. With few exceptions, 
this hideous and infamous belief was universal. 
Under these conditions, progress was almost im¬ 
possible. 

Fear paralyzes the brain. Progress is born of 
courage. Fear believes — courage doubts. Fear 
falls upon the earth and prays — courage stands 
erect and thinks. Fear retreats — courage advan¬ 
ces. Fear is barbarism — courage is civilization. 
Fear believes in witchcraft, in devils and in ghosts. 
Fear is religion — courage is science. 

The facts, upon which this terrible belief rested, 
were proved over and over again in every court of 
Europe. Thousands confessed themselves guilty— 
admitted that they had sold themselves to the devil. 
They gave the particulars of the sale; told what 
they said and what the devil replied. They con¬ 
fessed this, when they knew that confession was 
death; knew that their property would be con¬ 
fiscated, and their children left to beg their bread. 
This is one of the miracles of history—one of the 
strangest contradictions of the human mind. With- 



18 


THE GHOSTS. 


out doubt, they really believed themselves guilty. 
In the first place, they believed in witchcraft as a 
fact, and when charged with it, they probably 
became insane. In their insanity they confessed 
their guilt. They found themselves abhorred and 
deserted — charged with a crime that they could 
not disprove. Like a man in quicksand, every 
effort only sunk them deeper. Caught in this 
frightful web, at the mercy of the spiders of super¬ 
stition, hope fled, and nothing remained but the 
insanity of confession. The whole world appeared 
to be insane. 

In the time of James the First, a man was 
executed for causing a storm at sea with the inten¬ 
tion of drowning one of the royal family. How 
could he disprove it? How could he show that he 
did not cause the storm? All storms were at that 
time generally supposed to be caused by the devil 
— the prince of the power of the air — and by 
those whom he assisted. 

I implore you to remember that the believers in 
such impossible things were the authors of our 
creeds and confessions of faith. 

A woman was tried and convicted before Sir 
Matthew Hale, one of the great judges and lawyers 



THE GHOSTS. 


19 


of England, for having caused children to vomit 
crooked pins. She was also charged with having 
nursed devils. The learned judge charged the 
intelligent jury that there was no doubt as to the 
existence of witches; that it was established by all 
history, and expressly taught by the bible. 

The woman was hanged and her body burned. 

Sir Thomas Moore declared that to give up 
witchcraft was to throw away the sacred scriptures. 
In my judgment, he was right. 

John Wesley was a firm believer in ghosts and 
witches, and insisted upon it, years after all laws 
upon the subject had been repealed in England. I 
beg of you to remember that John Wesley was the 
founder of the Methodist Church. 

In New England, a woman was charged with 
being a witch, and with having changed herself into 
a fox. While in that condition she was attacked 
and bitten by some dogs. A committee of three 
men, by order of the court, examined this woman. 
They removed her clothing and searched for “witch 
spots.” That is to say, spots into which needles 
could be thrust without giving her pain. They 
reported to the court that such spots were found. 
She denied, however, that she ever had changed 



20 


THE GHOSTS. 


& 

herself into a fox. Upon the report of the com¬ 
mittee she was found guilty and actually executed. 
This was done by our Puritan fathers, by the 
gentlemen who braved the dangers of the deep for 
the sake of worshiping God and persecuting their 
fellow men. 

In those days people believed in what was 
known as lycanthropy—that is, that persons, with 
the assistance of the devil, could assume the form 
of wolves. An instance is given where a man was 
attacked by a wolf. He defended himself, and 
succeeded in cutting off one of the animal’s paws. 
The wolf ran away. The man picked up the paw, 
put it in his pocket and carried it home. There he 
found his wife with one of her hands gone. He 
took the paw from his pocket. It had changed to a 
human hand. He charged his wife with being a 
witch. She was tried. She confessed her guilt, 
and was burned. 

People were burned for causing frosts in sum¬ 
mer— for destroying crops with hail — for causing 
storms — for making cows go dry, and even for 
souring beer. There was no impossibility for which 
some one was not tried and convicted. The life of 
no one was secure. To be charged, was to be 



THE GHOSTS. 


21 


convicted. Every man was at the mercy of every 
other. This infamous belief was so firmly seated 
in the minds of the people, that to express a doubt 
as to its truth was to be suspected. Whoever 
denied the existence of witches and devils was 
denounced as an infidel. 

They believed that animals were often taken 
possession of by devils, and that the killing of the 
animal would destroy the devil. They absolutely 
tried, convicted, and executed dumb beasts. 

At Basle, in 1470, a rooster was tried upon the 
charge of having laid an egg. Rooster eggs were 
used only in making witch ointment,— this every¬ 
body knew. The rooster was convicted and with 
all due solemnity was burned in the public square. 
So a hog and six pigs were tried for having 
killed and partially eaten a child. The hog was 
convicted,— but the pigs, on account probably of 
their extreme youth, were acquitted. As late as 
1740, a cow was tried and convicted of being 
possessed by a devil. 

They used to exorcise rats, locusts, snakes and 
vermin. They used to go through the alleys, 
streets, and fields, and warn them to leave within a 
certain number of days. In case they disobeyed, 
they were threatened with pains and penalties. 



22 


THE GHOSTS. 


But let us be careful how we laugh at these 
things. Let us not pride ourselves too much on 
the progress of our age. We must not forget that 
some of our people are yet in the same intelligent 
business. Only a little while ago, the governor of 
Minnesota appointed a day of fasting and prayer, to 
see if some power could not be induced to kill the 
grasshoppers, or send them into some other state. 

About the close of the fifteenth century, so 
great was the excitement with regard to the exist¬ 
ence of witchcraft that Pope Innocent VIII issued 
a bull directing the inquisitors to be vigilant in 
searching out and punishing all guilty of this crime. 
Forms for the trial were regularly laid down in a 
book ora pamphlet called the “Malleus Malefi- 
corum” (Hammer of Witches), which was issued 
by the Roman See. Popes Alexander, Leo, and 
Adrian, issued like bulls. For two hundred and 
fifty years the church was busy in punishing the 
impossible crime of witchcraft; in burning, hanging 
and torturing men, women, and children. Protest¬ 
ants were as active as Catholics, and in Geneva five 
hundred witches were burned at the stake in a 
period of three months. About one thousand were 
executed in one year in the diocese of Como. At 



THE GHOSTS. 


23 


least one hundred thousand victims suffered in 
Germany alone: the last execution (in Wurtzburg) 
taking place as late as 1749. Witches were burned 
in Switzerland as late as 1780. 

In England the same frightful scenes were 
enacted. Statutes were passed from Henry VI to 
James I, defining the crime and its punishment. 
The last act passed by the British parliament was 
when Lord Bacon was a member of the House of 
Commons; and this act was not repealed until 
1736 . 

Sir William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on 
the Laws of England, says: “To deny the pos¬ 
sibility, nay, actual existence of witchcraft and 
sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the word of 
God in various passages both of the old and new 
testament; and the thing itself is a truth to which 
every nation in the world hath in its turn borne 
testimony, either by examples seemingly well at¬ 
tested, or by prohibitory laws, which at least 
suppose the possibility of a commerce with evil 
spirits. ” 

In Brown’s Dictionary of the Bible, published at 
Edinburg, Scotland, in 1807, it is said that: “A 
witch is a woman that has dealings with Satan. 



24 


THE GHOSTS. 


That such persons are among men is abundantly 
plain from scripture, and that they ought to be put 
to death/’ 

This work was re-published in Albany, New 
York, in 1816. No wonder the clergy of that city 
are ignorant and bigoted even unto this day. 

In 1716, Mrs. Hicks and her daughter, nine 
years of age, were hanged for selling their souls to 
the devil, and raising a storm by pulling off their 
stockings and making a lather of soap. 

In England it has been estimated that at least 
thirty thousand were hanged and burned. The last 
victim executed in Scotland, perished in 1722. 
“She was an innocent old woman, who had so little 
idea of her situation as to rejoice at the sight of the 
fire which was destined to consume her. She had 
a daughter, lame both of hands and of feet — a 
circumstance attributed to the witch having been 
used to transform her daughter into a pony and 
getting her shod by the devil.” 

In 1692, nineteen persons were executed and 
one pressed to death in Salem, Massachusetts, for 
the crime of witchcraft. 

It was thought in those days that men and 
women made compacts with the devil, orally and in 



THE GHOSTS. 


25 


writing. That they abjured God and Jesus Christ, 
and dedicated themselves wholly to the devil. The 
contracts were confirmed at a general meeting of 
witches and ghosts, over which the devil himself 
presided; and the persons generally signed the 
articles of agreement with their own blood. These 
contracts were, in some instances, for a few years; 
in others, for life. General assemblies of the 
witches were held at least once a year, at which 
they appeared entirely naked, besmeared with an 
ointment made from the bodies of unbaptizcd in¬ 
fants. “To these meetings they rode from great 
distances on broomsticks, pokers, goats, hogs, and 
dogs. Here they did homage to the prince of hell, 
and offered him sacrifices of young children, and 
practiced all sorts of license until the break of 
day.” 

“As late as 1815, Belgium was disgraced by a 
witch trial; and guilt was established by the water 
ordeal.” “In 1836, the populace of Hela, near 
Dantzic, twice plunged into the sea a woman 
reputed to be a sorceress; and as the miserable 
creature persisted in rising to the surface, she was 
pronounced guilty, and beaten to death.” 

“It was believed that the bodies of devils are 



26 


THE GHOSTS. 


not like those of men and animals, cast in an 
unchangeable mould. It was thought they were 
like clouds, refined and subtle matter, capable of 
assuming any form and penetrating into any orifice. 
The horrible tortures they endured in their place of 
punishment rendered them extremely sensitive to 
suffering, and they continually sought a temperate 
and somewhat moist warmth in order to allay their 
pangs. It was for this reason they so frequently 
entered into men and women.” 

The devil could transport men, at his will, 
through the air. He could beget children; and 
Martin Luther himself had come in contact with 
one of these children. He recommended the 
mother to throw the child into the river, in order to 
free their house from the presence of a devil. 

It was believed that the devil could transform 
people into any shape he pleased. 

Whoever denied these things was denounced as 
an infidel. All the believers in witchcraft con¬ 
fidently appealed to the bible. Their mouths were 
filled with passages demonstrating the existence of 
witches and their power over human beings. By 
the bible they proved that innumerable evil spirits 
were ranging over the world endeavoring to ruin 



THE GHOSTS. 


27 


mankind; that these spirits possessed a power and 
wisdom far transcending the limits of human facul¬ 
ties ; that they delighted in every misfortune that 
could befall the world; that their malice was super¬ 
human. That they caused tempests was proved by 
the action of the devil toward Job; by the passage 
in the book of Revelation describing the four angels 
who held the four winds, and to whom it was given 
to afflict the earth. They believed the devil could 
carry persons hundreds of miles, in a few seconds, 
through the air. They believed this, because they 
knew that Christ had been carried by the devil in 
the same manner and placed on a pinnacle of the 
temple. “The prophet Habakkuk had been trans¬ 
ported by a spirit from Judea to Babylon; and 
Philip, the evangelist, had been the object of a 
similar miracle; and in the same way Saint Paul 
had been carried in the body into the third 
heaven.” 

“In those pious days, they believed that Incubi 
and Succubi were forever wandering among man¬ 
kind, alluring, by more than human charms, the 
unwary to their destruction, and laying plots, which 
were too often successful, against the virtue of the 
saints. Sometimes the witches kindled in the 



28 


THE GHOSTS. 


monastic priest a more terrestrial fire. People told, 
with bated breath, how, under the spell of a vin¬ 
dictive woman, four successive abbots in a German 
monastery had been wasted away by an unholy 
flame.” 

An instance is given in which the devil not only 
assumed the appearance of a holy man, in order to 
pay his addresses to a lady, but when discovered, 
crept under the bed, suffered himself to be dragged 
out, and was impudent enough to declare that he 
was the veritable bishop. So perfectly had he 
assumed the form and features of the prelate that 
those who knew the bishop best were deceived. 

One can hardly imagine the frightful state of 
the human mind during these long centuries of 
darkness and superstition. To them, these things 
were awful and frightful realities. Hovering above 
them in the air, in their houses, in the bosoms of 
friends, in their very bodies, in all the darkness of 
night, everywhere, around, above and below, were 
innumerable hosts of unclean and malignant devils. 

From the malice of those leering and vindictive 
vampires of the air, the church pretended to 
defend mankind. Pursued by these phantoms, the 
frightened multitudes fell upon their faces and im- 



THE GHOSTS. 


29 


plored the aid of robed hypocrisy and sceptered 
theft. 

Take from the orthodox church of to-day the 
threat and fear of hell, and it becomes an extinct 
volcano. 

Take from the church the miraculous, the super¬ 
natural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, 
the impossible, the unknowable, and the absurd, 
and nothing but a vacuum remains. 

Notwithstanding all the infamous things justly 
laid to the charge of the church, we are told that 
the civilization of to-day is the child of what we 
are pleased to call the superstition of the past. 

Religion has not civilized man — man has civil¬ 
ized religion. God improves as man advances. 

Let me call your attention to what we have 
received from the followers of the ghosts. Let me 
give you an outline of the sciences as taught by 
these philosophers of the clouds. 

All diseases were produced, either as a punish¬ 
ment by the good ghosts, or out of pure malignity 
by the bad ones. There were, properly speaking, 
no diseases. The sick were possessed by ghosts. 
The science of medicine consisted in knowing how 



30 


THE GHOSTS. 


to persuade these ghosts to vacate the premises. 
For thousands of years the diseased were treated 
with incantations, with hideous noises, with drums 
and gongs. Everything was done to make the visit 
of the ghost as unpleasant as possible, and they 
generally succeeded in making things so disagree¬ 
able that if the ghost did not leave, the patient did. 
These ghosts were supposed to be of different 
rank, power and dignity. Now and then a man 
pretended to have won the favor of some powerful 
ghost, and that gave him power over the little 
ones. Such a man became an eminent physician. 

It was found that certain kinds of smoke, such 
as that produced by burning the liver of a fish, the 
dried skin of a serpent, the eyes of a toad, or the 
tongue of an adder, were exceedingly offensive to 
the nostrils of an ordinary ghost. With this 
smoke, the sick room would be filled until the ghost 
vanished or the patient died. 

It was also believed that certain words, — the 
names of the most powerful ghosts, — when prop¬ 
erly pronounced, were very effective weapons. It 
was for a long time thought that Latin words were 
the best, — Latin being a dead language, and 
known by the clergy. Others thought that two 



THE GHOSTS. 


31 


sticks laid across each other and held before the 
wicked ghost would cause it instantly to flee in 
dread away. 

For thousands of years, the practice of medicine 
consisted in driving these evil spirits out of the 
bodies of men. 

In some instances, bargains and compromises 
were made with the ghosts. One case is given 
where a multitude of devils traded a man for a herd 
of swine. In this transaction the devils were 
the losers, as the swine immediately drowned 
themselves in the sea. This idea of disease 
appears to have been almost universal, and is by no 
means yet extinct. 

The contortions of the epileptic, the strange 
twitchings of those afflicted with chorea, the 
shakings of palsy, dreams, trances, and the number¬ 
less frightful phenomena produced by diseases of 
the nerves, were all seized upon as so many proofs 
that the bodies of men were filled with unclean and 
malignant ghosts. 

Whoever endeavored to account for these things 
by natural causes, whoever attempted to cure 
diseases by natural means, was denounced by the 
church as an infidel. To explain anything was a 



32 


THE GHOSTS. 


crime. It was to the interest of the priest that all 
phenomena should be accounted for by the will and 
power of gods and devils. The moment it is 
admitted that all phenomena are within the domain 
of the natural, the necessity for a priest has 
disappeared. Religion breathes the air of the 
supernatural. Take from the mind of man the idea 
of the supernatural, and religion ceases to exist. 
For this reason, the church has always despised the 
man who explained the wonderful. Upon this 
principle, nothing was left undone to stay the 
science of medicine. As long as plagues and pesti¬ 
lences could be stopped by prayer, the priest was 
useful. The moment the physician found a cure, 
the priest became an extravagance. The moment it 
began to be apparent that prayer could do nothing 
for the body, the priest shifted his ground and 
began praying for the soul. 

Long after the devil idea was substantially aban¬ 
doned in the practice of medicine, and when it was 
admitted that God had nothing to do with ordinary 
coughs and colds, it was still believed that all the 
frightful diseases were sent by him as punishments 
for the wickedness of the people. It was thought to 
be a kind of blasphemy to even try, by any natural 



THE GHOSTS. 


33 


means, to stay the ravages of pestilence. Formerly, 
during the prevalence of plague and epidemics, the 
arrogance of the priest was boundless. He told 
the people that they had slighted the clergy, that 
they had refused to pay tithes, that they had 
doubted some of the doctrines of the church, and 
that God was now taking his revenge. The people 
for the most part, believed this infamous tissue 
of priestcraft. They hastened to fall upon their 
knees; they poured out their wealth upon the 
altars of hypocrisy; they abased and debased 
themselves; from their minds they banished all 
doubts, and made haste to crawl in the very dust of 
humility. 

The church never wanted disease to be under 
the control of man. Timothy Dwight, president of 
Yale College, preached a sermon against vaccina¬ 
tion. His idea was, that if God had decreed from 
all eternity that a certain man should die with the 
small-pox, it was a frightful sin to avoid and annul 
that decree by the trick of vaccination. Small-pox 
being regarded as one of the heaviest guns in the 
arsenal of heaven, to spike it was the height of 
presumption. Plagues and pestilences were instru¬ 
mentalities in the hands of God with which ta 



34 


THE GHOSTS. 


gain the love and worship of mankind. To find 
a cure for disease was to take a weapon from the 
church. No one tries to cure the ague with prayer. 
Quinine has been found altogether more reliable. 
Just as soon as a specific is found for a disease, 
that disease will be left out of the list of prayer. 
The number of diseases with which God from time 
to time afflicts mankind, is continually decreasing. 
In a few years all of them will be under the control 
of man, the gods will be left unarmed, and the 
threats of their priests will excite only a smile. 

The science of medicine has had but one 
$nemy — religion. Man was afraid to save his 
body for fear he might lose his soul. 

Is it any wonder that the people in those days 
believed in and taught the infamous doctrine of 
eternal punishment — a doctrine that makes God a 
heartless monster and man a slimy hypocrite and 
slave ? 

The ghosts were historians, and their histories 
were the grossest absurdities. “Tales told by 
idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” 
In those days the histories were written by the 
monks, who, as a rule, were almost as superstitious 



THE GHOSTS. 


35 


as they were dishonest. They wrote as though 
they had been witnesses of every occurrence they 
related. They wrote the history of every country 
of importance. They told all the past and pre¬ 
dicted all the future with an impudence that 
amounted to sublimity. “They traced the order of 
St. Michael, in France, to the archangel himself, 
and alleged that he was the founder of a chivalric 
order in heaven itself. They said that Tartars 
originally came from hell, and that they were called 
Tartars because Tartarus was one of the names of 
perdition. They declared that Scotland was so 
named after Scota, a daughter of Pharaoh, who 
landed in Ireland, invaded Scotland, and took it by 
force of arms. This statement was made in a letter 
addressed to the Pope in the fourteenth century, 
and was alluded to as a well-known fact. The 
letter was written by some of the highest digni¬ 
taries, and by the direction of the King himself.” 

These gentlemen accounted for the red on the 
breasts of robins, from the fact that these birds 
carried water to unbaptized infants in hell. 

Matthew, of Paris, an eminent historian of the 
fourteenth century, gave the world the following 
piece of information: “ It is well known that 



36 


THE GHOSTS. 


Mohammed was once a cardinal, and became a 
heretic because he failed in his effort to be elected 
pope;” and that having drank to excess, he fell by 
the roadside, and in this condition was killed by 
swine. “And for that reason, his followers abhor 
pork even unto this day.” 

Another eminent historian informs us that Nero 
was in the habit of vomiting frogs. When I read 
this, I said to myself: Some of the croakers of the 
present day against Progress would be the better 
for such a vomit. 

The history of Charlemagne was written by 
Turpin, of Rheims. He was a bishop. He assures 
us that the walls of a city fell down in answer to 
prayer. That there were giants in those days who 
could take fifty ordinary men under their arms and 
walk away with them. “With the greatest of these, 
a direct descendant of Goliath, one Orlando had a 
theological discussion, and that in the heat of the 
debate, when the giant was overwhelmed with the 
argument, Orlando rushed forward and inflicted a 
fatal stab.” 

The history of Britain, written by the arch¬ 
deacons of Monmouth and Oxford, was wonderfully 
popular. According to them, Brutus conquered 



THE GHOSTS. 


37 


England and built the city of London. During his 
time, it rained pure blood for three days. At 
another time, a monster came from the sea, and, 
after having devoured great multitudes of people, 
swallowed the king and disappeared. They tell us 
that King Arthur was not born like other mortals, 
but was the result of a magical contrivance; that 
he had great luck in killing giants; that he killed 
one in France that had the cheerful habit of eating 
some thirty men a day. That this giant had 
clothes woven of the beards of the kings he had 
devoured. To cap the climax, one of the authors 
of this book was promoted for having written the 
only reliable history of his country. 

In all the histories of those days there is hardly 
a single truth. Facts were considered unworthy 
of preservation. Anything that really happened 
was not of sufficient interest or importance to be 
recorded. The great religious historian, Eusebius, 
ingenuously remarks that in his history he carefully 
omitted whatever tended to discredit the church, 
and that he piously magnified all that conduced to 
her glory. 

The same glorious principle was scrupulously 
adhered to by all the historians of that time. 



38 


THE GHOSTS. 


They wrote, and the people believed, that the 
tracks of Pharoah’s chariots were still visible on 
the sands of the Red Sea, and that they had been 
miraculously preserved from the winds and waves 
as perpetual witnesses of the great miracle there 
performed. 

It is safe to say that every truth in the histories 
of those times is the result of accident or mistake. 

They accounted for everything as the work of 
good and evil spirits. With cause and effect they 
had nothing to do. Facts were in no way related 
to each other. God, governed by infinite caprice, 
filled the world with miracles and disconnected 
events. From the quiver of his hatred came the 
arrows of famine, pestilence, and death. 

The moment that the idea is abandoned that all 
is natural; that all phenomena are the necessary 
links in the endless chain of being, the conception 
of history becomes impossible. With the ghosts, 
the present is not the child of the past, nor the 
mother of the future. In the domain of religion 
all is chance, accident, and caprice. 

Do not forget, I pray you, that our creeds were 
written by the cotemporaries of these historians. 



THE GHOSTS. 


39 


.The same idea was applied to law. It was 
believed by our intelligent ancestors that all law 
derived its sacredness and its binding force from 
the fact that it had been communicated to man by 
the ghosts. Of course it was not pretended that 
the ghosts told everybody the law; but they told it 
to a few, and the few told it to the people, and the 
people, as a rule, paid them exceedingly well for 
their trouble. It was thousands of ages before the 
people commenced making laws for themselves, and 
strange as it may appear, most of these laws were 
vastly superior to the ghost article. Through the 
web and woof of human legislation began to run 
and shine and glitter the golden thread of justice. 

During these years of darkness it was believed 
that rather than see an act of injustice done ; rather 
than see the innocent suffer; rather than see the 
guilty triumph, some ghost would interfere. This 
belief, as a rule, gave great satisfaction to the 
victorious party, and as the other man was dead, 
no complaint was heard from him. 

This doctrine was the sanctification of brute 
force and chance. They had trials by battle, by 
fire, by water, and by lot. Persons were made to 
grasp hot iron, and if it burned them their guilt 



40 


THE GHOSTS. 


was established. Others, with tied hands and feet, 
were cast into the sea, and if they sank, the verdict 
of guilty was unanimous,— if they did not sink, 
they were in league with devils. 

So in England, persons charged with crime 
could appeal to the corsned. The corsned was a 
piece of the sacramental bread. If the defendant 
could swallow this piece he went acquit. Godwin, 
Earl of Kent, in the time of Edward the Confessor, 
appealed to the corsned. He failed to swallow it 
and was choked to death. 

The ghosts and their followers always took 
delight in torture, in cruel and unusual punish¬ 
ments. For the infraction of most of their laws, 
death was the penalty — death produced by stoning 
and by fire. Sometimes, when man committed 
only murder, he was allowed to flee to some city 
of refuge. Murder was a crime against man. But 
for saying certain words, or denying certain doc¬ 
trines, or for picking up sticks on certain days, or 
for worshiping the wrong ghost, or for failing to 
pray to the right one, or for laughing at a priest, or 
for saying that wine was not blood, or that br x ead 
was not flesh, or for failing to regard ram’s horns as 
artillery, or for insisting that a dry bone was 



THE GHOSTS. 


41 


scarcely sufficient to take the place of water works, 
or that a raven, as a rule, made a poor landlord: — 
death, produced by all the ways that the ingenuity 
of hatred could devise, was the penalty. 

Law is a growth — it is a science. Right and 
wrong exist in the nature of things. Things are 
not right because they are commanded, nor wrong 
because they are prohibited. There are real crimes 
enough without creating artificial ones. All prog¬ 
ress in legislation has for centuries consisted in 
repealing the law T s of the ghosts. 

The idea of right and wrong is born of man’s 
capacity to enjoy and suffer. If man could not 
suffer, if he could not inflict injury upon his fellow, 
if he could neither feel nor inflict pain, the idea of 
right and wrong never would have entered his 
brain. But for this, the word conscience never 
would have passed the lips of man. 

There is one good — happiness. There is but 
one sin — selfishness. All law should be for the 
preservation of the one and the destruction of the 
other. 

Under the regime of the ghosts, laws were not 
supposed to exist in the nature of things. They 
were supposed to be simply the irresponsible com- 



42 


THE GHOSTS. 


mand of a ghost. These commands were not 
supposed to rest upon reason, they were the 
product of arbitrary will. 

The penalties for the violation of these laws 
were as cruel as the laws were senseless and 
absurd. Working on the Sabbath and murder 
were both punished with death. The tendency of 
such laws is to blot from the human heart the sense 
of justice. 

To show you how perfectly every department of 
knowledge, or ignorance rather, was saturated with 
superstition, I will for a moment refer to the science 
of language. 

It was thought by our fathers, that Hebrew was 
the original language; that it was taught to Adam 
in the Garden of Eden by the Almighty, and that 
consequently all languages came from, and could 
be traced to, the Hebrew. Every fact inconsistent 
with that idea was discarded. According to the 
ghosts, the trouble at the tower of Babel accounted 
for the fact that all people did not speak Hebrew. 
The Babel business settled all questions in the 
science of language. 

After a time, so many facts were found to be 



THE GHOSTS. 


43 


inconsistent with the Hebrew idea that it began to 
fall into disrepute, and other languages began to 
compete for the honor of being the original. 

Andre Kempe, in 1569, published a work on the 
language of Paradise, in which he maintained that 
God spoke to Adam in Swedish; that Adam 
answered in Danish; and that the serpent — which 
appears to me quite probable — spoke to Eve in 
French. Erro, in a work published at Madrid, 
took the ground that Basque was the language 
spoken in the Garden of Eden; but in 1580 
Goropius published his celebrated work at Ant¬ 
werp, in which he put the whole matter at rest by 
showing, beyond all doubt, that the language 
spoken in Paradise was neither more nor less than 
plain Holland Dutch. 

The real founder of the science of language 
was Liebnitz, a cotemporary of Sir Isaac Newton. 
He discarded the idea that all languages could be 
traced to one language. He maintained that 
language was a natural growth. Experience 
teaches us that this must be so. Words are 
continually dying and continually being born. 
Words are naturally and necessarily produced. 
Words are the garments of thought, the robes of 




44 


THE GHOSTS. 


ideas. Some are as rude as the skins of wild 
beasts, and others glisten and glitter like silk and 
gold. They have been born of hatred and 
revenge; of love and self-sacrifice; of hope and 
fear, of agony and joy. These words are born of 
the terror and beauty of nature. The stars have 
fashioned them. In them mingle the darkness and 
the dawn. From everything they have taken 
something. Words are the crystalizations of 
human history, of all that man has enjoyed and 
and suffered — his victories and defeats — all that 
he has lost and won. Words are the shadows of 
all that has been — the mirrors of all that is. 

The ghosts also enlightened our fathers in 
astronomy and geology. According to them the 
earth was made out of nothing, and a little more 
nothing having been taken than was used in the 
construction of this world, the stars were made out 
of what was left over. Cosmos, in the sixth 
century, taught that the stars were impelled by 
angels, who either carried them on their shoulders, 
rolled them in front of them, or drew them after. 
He also taught that each angel that pushed a star 
took great pains to observe what the other angels 
were doing, so that the relative distances between 


i 



THE GHOSTS . 


45 


the stars might always remain the same. He also 
gave his idea as to the form of the world. 

He stated that the world was a vast parallelo¬ 
gram ; that on the outside was a strip of land, 
like the frame of a common slate; that then there 
was a strip of water, and in the middle a great 
piece of land; that Adam and Eve lived on the 
outer strip; that their descendants, with the excep¬ 
tion of the Noah family, were drowned by a flood 
on this outer strip; that the ark finally rested on 
the middle piece of land where we now are. He 
accounted for night and day by saying that on the 
outside strip of land there was a high mountain, 
around which the sun and moon revolved, and 
that when the sun was on the other side of the 
mountain, it was night; and when on this side, it 
was day. 

He also declared that the earth was flat. This 
he proved by many passages from the bible. 
Among other reasons for believing the earth to 
be flat, he brought forward the following: We are 
told in the new testament that Christ shall come 
again in glory and power, and all the world shall 
see him. Now, if the world is round, how are the 
people on the other side going to see Christ when 



46 


THE GHOSTS. 


he comes? That settled the question, and the 
church not only endorsed the book, but declared 
that whoever believed less or more than stated by 
Cosmos, was a heretic. 

In those blessed days, Ignorance was a king 
and Science an outcast. 

They knew the moment this earth ceased to be 
the centre of the universe, and became a mere 
speck in the starry heaven of existence, that their 
religion would become a childish fable of the past. 

In the name and by the authority of the ghosts, 
men enslaved their fellow men; they trampled upon 
the rights of women and children. In the name 
and by the authority of ghosts, they bought and 
sold and destroyed each other; they filled heaven 
with tyrants and earth with slaves, the present with 
despair and the future with horror. In the name 
and by the authority of the ghosts, they imprisoned 
the human mind, polluted the conscience, hardened 
the heart, subverted justice, crowned robbery, 
sainted hypocrisy, and extinguished for a thousand 
years the torch of reason. 

I have endeavored, in some faint degree, to 
show you what has happened, and what always will 
happen when men are governed by superstition and 



THE GHOSTS. 


47 


fear; when they desert the sublime standard of 
reason; when they take the words of others and do 
not investigate for themselves. 

Even the great men of those days were nearly 
as weak in this matter as the most ignorant. 
Kepler, one of the greatest men of the world, an 
astronomer second to none, although he plucked 
from the stars the secrets of the universe, was an 
astrologer, and really believed that he could predict 
the career of a man by finding what star was in the 
ascendant at his birth. This great man breathed, 
so to speak, the atmosphere of his time. He 
believed in the music of the spheres, and assigned 
alto, bass, tenor, and treble to certain stars. 

Tycho Brahe, another astronomer, kept an idiot, 
whose disconnected and meaningless words he 
carefully set down, and then put them together in 
such manner as to make prophecies, and then 
waited patiently to see them fulfilled. Luther 
believed that he had actually seen the devil, and 
had discussed points of theology with him. The 
human mind was in chains. Every idea almost was 
a monster. Thought was deformed. Facts were 
looked upon as worthless. Only the wonderful was 
worth preserving. Things that actually happened 



48 


THE GHOSTS. 


were not considered worth recording; — real occur¬ 
rences were too common. Everybody expected 
the miraculous. 

The ghosts were supposed to be busy; devils 
were thought to be the most industrious things in 
the universe, and with these imps, every occurrence 
of an unusual character was in some way connected. 
There was no order, no serenity, no certainty in 
anything. Everything depended upon ghosts and 
phantoms. Man was, for the most part, at the 
mercy of malevolent spirits. He protected himself 
as best he could with holy water and tapers and 
wafers and cathedrals. He made noises and rung 
bells to frighten the ghosts, and he made music 
to charm them. He used smoke to choke them, 
and incense to please them. He wore beads and 
crosses. He said prayers, and hired others to say 
them. He fasted when he was hungry, and feasted 
when he was not. He believed everything that 
seemed unreasonable, just to appease the ghosts. 
He humbled himself. He crawled in the dust. 
He shut the doors and windows, and excluded 
every ray of light from the temple of the soul. 
He debauched and polluted his own mind, and 
toiled night and day to repair the walls of his own 



THE GHOSTS. 


49 


prison. From the garden of his heart he plucked 
and trampled upon the holy flowers of pity. 

The priests reveled in horrible descriptions 
of hell. Concerning the wrath of God, they 
grew eloquent. They denounced man as totally 
depraved. They made reason blasphemy, and 
pity a crime. Nothing so delighted them as 
painting the torments and sufferings of the lost. 
Over the worm that never dies they grew poetic; 
and the second death filled them with a kind of 
holy delight. According to them, the smoke and 
cries ascending from hell were the perfume and 
music of heaven. 

At the risk of being tiresome, I have said what 
I have to show you the productions of the human 
mind, when enslaved; the effects of wide-spread 
ignorance — the results of fear. I want to convince 
you that every form of slavery is a viper, that, 
sooner or later, will strike its poison fangs into the 
bosoms of men. 

The first great step towards progress, is, for 
man to cease to be the slave of man; the second, 
to cease to be the slave of the monsters of his own 
creation—of the ghosts and phantoms of the air. 

For ages the human race was imprisoned. 


4 



oO 


THE GHOSTS. 


Through the bars and grates came a few struggling 
rays of light. Against these grates and bars 
Science pressed its pale and thoughtful face, wooed 
by the holy dawn of human advancement. 

Men found that the real was the useful; that 
what a man knows is better than what a ghost 
says; that an event is more valuable than a 
prophecy. They found that diseases were not 
produced by spirits, and could not be cured by 
frightening them away. They found that death 
was as natural as life. They began to study the 
anatomy and chemistry of the human body, and 
found that all was natural and within the domain 
of law. 

The conjurer and sorcerer were discarded, and 
the physician and surgeon employed. They found 
that the earth was not flat; that the stars were not 
mere specks. They found that being born under a 
particular planet had nothing to do with the 
fortunes of men. 

The astrologer was discharged and the astron¬ 
omer took his place. 

They found that the earth had swept through 
the constellations for millions of ages. They 
found that good and evil were produced by natural 



THE GHOSTS. 


51 


causes, and not by ghosts; that man could not be 
good enough or bad enough to stop or cause a 
rain; that diseases were produced as naturally as 
grass, and were not sent as punishments upon 
man for failing to believe a certain creed. They 
found that man, through intelligence, could take 
advantage of the forces of nature — that he could 
make the waves, the winds, the flames, and the 
lightnings of heaven do his bidding and minister to 
his wants. They found that the ghosts knew 
nothing of benefit to man; that they were utterly 
ignorant of geology — of astronomy — of geogra¬ 
phy;— that they knew nothing of history; — that 
they were poor doctors and worse surgeons; — that 
they knew nothing of law and less of justice; 
that they were without brains, and utterly destitute 
of hearts; that they knew nothing of the rights of 
men; that they were despisers of women, the 
haters of progress, the enemies of science, and the 
destroyers of liberty. 

The condition of the world during the Dark 
Ages shows exactly the result of enslaving the 
bodies and souls of men. In those days there was 
no freedom. Labor was despised, and a laborer 



52 


THE GHOSTS. 


was considered but little above a beast. Ignorance, 
like a vast cowl, covered the brain of the world, 
and superstition ran riot with the imagination of 
man. The air was filled with angels, with demons 
and monsters. Credulity sat upon the throne of 
the soul, and Reason was an exiled king. A man 
to be distinguished must be a soldier or a monk. 
War and theology, that is to say, murder and 
hypocrisy, were the principal employments of man. 
Industry was a slave, theft was commerce ; murder 
was war, hypocrisy was religion. 

Every Christian country maintained that it was 
no robbery to take the property of Mohammedans 
by force, and no murder to kill the owners. Lord 
Bacon was the first man of note who maintained 
that a Christian country was bound to keep its 
plighted faith with an infidel nation. Reading and 
writing were considered dangerous arts. Every 
layman who could read and write was suspected of 
being a heretic. All thought was discouraged. 
They forged chains of superstition for the minds, 
and manacles of iron for the bodies of men. The 
earth was ruled by the cowl and sword,— by the 
mitre and scepter,— by the altar and throne,— by 
Fear and Force,— by Ignorance and Faith,— by 
ghouls and ghosts. 



THE GHOSTS. 


53 


In the fifteenth century the following law was 
in force in England: 

“That whosoever reads the scriptures in the 
mother tongue, shall forfeit land, cattle, life, and 
goods from their heirs forever, and so be condemned 
for heretics to God, enemies to the crown, and 
most arrant traitors to the land.” 

During the first year this law was in force thirty- 
nine were hanged for its violation and their bodies 
burned. 

In the sixteenth century men were burned be¬ 
cause they failed to kneel to a procession of monks. 

The slightest word uttered against the supersti¬ 
tion of the time was punished with death. 

Even the reformers, so called, of those days, 
had no idea of intellectual liberty — no idea even 
of toleration. Luther, Knox, Calvin, believed in 
religious liberty only when they were in the minor¬ 
ity. The moment they were clothed with power 
they began to exterminate with fire and sword. 

Castellio was the first minister who advocated 
the liberty of the soul. He was regarded by the 
reformers as a criminal, and treated as though he 
had committed the crime of crimes. 

Bodinus, a lawyer of France, about the same 



54 


THE GHOSTS. 


time, wrote a few words in favor of the freedom of 
conscience, but public opinion was overwhelmingly 
against him. The people were ready, anxious, and 
willing, with whip, and chain, and fire, to drive 
from the mind of man the heresy that he had a 
right to think. 

Montaigne, a man blest with so much common 
sense that he was the most uncommon man of his 
time, was the first to raise a voice against torture 
in France. But what was the voice of one man 
against the terrible cry of Ignorant, infatuated, su¬ 
perstitious and malevolent millions? It was the 
cry of a drowning man in the wild roar of the cruel 
sea. 

In spite of the efforts of the brave few the in¬ 
famous war against the freedom of the soul was 
waged until at least one hundred millions of human 
beings — fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters — with 
hopes, loves, and aspirations like ourselves, were 
sacrificed upon the cruel altar of an ignorant faith. 
They perished in every way by which death can be 
produced. Every nerve of pain was sought out 
and touched by the believers in ghosts. 

For my part I glory in the fact, that here in 
the new world,—in the United States,— liberty of 



THE GHOSTS. 


55 


conscience was first guaranteed to man, and that 
the Constitution of the United States was the first 
great decree entered in the high court of human 
equity forever divorcing Church and State,— the 
first injunction granted against the interference of 
the ghosts. This was one of the grandest steps 
ever taken by the human race in the direction of 
Progress. 

You will ask what has caused this wonderful 
change in three hundred years. And I answer — 
the inventions and discoveries of the few; — the 
brave thoughts, the heroic utterances of the few; 

*—the acquisition of a few facts. 

Besides, you must remember that every wrong 
in some way tends to abolish itself. It is hard to 
make a lie stand always. A lie will not fit a fact. 
It will only fit another lie made for the purpose. 
The life of a lie is simply a question of time. 
Nothing Tut truth is immortal. The nobles and 
kings quarreled; — the priests began to dispute;— 
the ideas of government began to change. 

In 1441 printing was discovered. At that time 
the past was a vast cemetery with hardly an 
epitaph. The ideas of men had mostly perished 
in the brain that produced them. The lips of the 



56 


THE GHOSTS. 


human race had been sealed. Printing gave 
pinions to thought. It preserved ideas. It made 
it possible for man to bequeath to the future the 
riches of his brain, the wealth of his soul. At 
first, it was used to flood the world with the 
mistakes of the ancients, but since that time it has 
been flooding the world with light. 

When people read they begin to reason, and 
when they reason they progress. This was another 
grand step in the direction of Progress. 

The discovery of powder, that put the peasant 
almost upon a par with the prince; — that put an 
end to the so-called age of chivalry;—that released 
avast number of men from the armies; — that gave 
pluck and nerve a chance with brute strength. 

The discovery of America, whose shores were 
trod by the restless feet of adventure;—that 
brought people holding every shade of superstition 
together;—-that gave the world an opportunity to 
compare notes, and to laugh at the follies of each 
other. Out of this strange mingling of all creeds, 
and superstitions, and facts, and theories, and 
countless opinions, came the Great Republic. 

Every fact has pushed a superstition from the 
brain and a ghost from the clouds. Every me- 



THE GHOSTS. 


57 


chanic art is an educator. Every loom, every 
reaper and mower, every steamboat, every locomo¬ 
tive, every engine, every press, every telegraph, is 
a missionary of Science and an apostle of Progress. 
Every mill, every furnace, every building with its 
wheels and levers, in which something is made for 
the convenience, for the use, and for the comfort 
and elevation of man, is a church, and every school 
house is a temple. 

Education is the most radical thing in the world. 

To teach the alphabet is to inaugurate a revo¬ 
lution. 

To build a school house is to construct a fort. 

Every library is an arsenal filled with the 
weapons and ammunition of Progress, and every 
fact is a monitor with sides of iron and a turret of 
steel. 

I thank the inventors, the discoverers, the 
thinkers. I thank Columbus and Magellan. I 
thank Galileo, and Copernicus, and Kepler, and 
Des Cartes, and Newton, and La Place. I thank 
Locke, and Hume, and Bacon, and Shakespeare, 
and Kant, and Fichte, and Liebnitz, and Goethe. 
I thank Fulton, and Watts, and Volta, and Galvani, 
and Franklin, and Morse, who made lightning the 



58 


THE GHOSTS. 


messenger of man. I thank Humboldt, the 
Shakespeare of science. I thank Crompton and 
Arkwright, from whose brains leaped the looms 
and spindles that clothe the world. I thank 
Luther for protesting against the abuses of the 
church, and I denounce him because he was the 
enemy of liberty. I thank Calvin for writing a 
book in favor of religious freedom, and I abhor 
him because he burned Servetus. I thank Knox 
for resisting episcopal persecution, and I hate 
him because he persecuted in his turn. I thank 
the Puritans for saying “Resistance to tyrants 
is obedience to God,” and yet I am compelled 
to say that they were tyrants themselves. I thank 
Thomas Paine because he was a believer in liberty, 
and because he did as much to make my country 
free as any other human being. I thank Voltaire, 
that great man who, for half a century, was the 
intellectual emperor of Europe, and who, from his 
throne at the foot of the Alps, pointed the finger 
of scorn at every hypocrite in Christendom. I 
thank Darwin, Haeckel and Buchner, Spencer, 
Tyndall and Huxley, Draper, Leckey and Buckle. 

I thank the inventors, the discoverers, the 
thinkers, the scientists, the explorers. I thank 
the honest millions who have toiled. 



THE GHOSTS. 


59 


I thank the brave men with brave thoughts. 
They are the Atlases upon whose broad and mighty 
shoulders rests the grand fabric of civilization. 
They are the men who have broken, and are still 
breaking, the chains of Superstition. They are the 
Titans who carried Olympus by assault, and who 
will soon stand victors upon Sinai’s crags. 

We are beginning to learn that to exchange a 
mistake for the truth — a superstition for a fact — 
to ascertain the real —is to progress. 

Happiness is the only possible good, and all 
that tends to the happiness of man is right, and is 
of value. All that tends to develop the bodies and 
minds of men; all that gives us better houses, bet¬ 
ter clothes, better food, better pictures, grander 
music, better heads, better hearts; all that renders 
us more intellectual and more loving, nearer just; 
that makes us better husbands and wives, better 
children, better citizens — all these things combined 
produce what I call Progress. 

Man advances only as he overcomes the ob¬ 
structions of Nature, and this can be done only by 
labor and by thought. Labor is the foundation of 
all. Without labor, and without great labor, prog- 



60 


THE GHOSTS. 


ress is impossible. The progress of the world 
depends upon the men who walk in the fresh fur¬ 
rows and through the rustling corn; upon those 
who sow and reap; upon those whose faces are 
radiant with the glare of furnace fires; upon the 
delvers in the mines, and the workers in shops; 
upon those who give to the winter air the ringing 
music of the axe; upon those who battle with the 
boisterous billows of the sea; upon the inventors 
and discoverers; upon the brave thinkers. 

From the surplus produced by labor, schools 
and universities are built and fostered. From this 
surplus the painter is paid for the productions of 
the pencil; the sculptor for chiseling shapeless rock 
into forms divinely beautiful, and the poet for sing¬ 
ing the hopes, the loves, the memories, and the 
aspirations of the world. This surplus has given 
us the books in which we converse with the dead 
and living kings of the human race. It has given 
us all there is of beauty, of elegance, and of re¬ 
fined happiness. 

I am aware that there is a vast difference of 
opinion as to what progress really is; that many 
denounce the ideas of to-day as destructive of all 
happiness—of all good. I know that there are 



THE GHOSTS. 


61 


many worshipers of the past. They venerate the 
ancient because it is ancient. They see no beauty 
in anything from which they do not blow the dust 
of ages with the breath of praise. They say, no 
masters like the old; no religion, no governments 
like the ancient; no orators, no poets, no statesmen 
like those who have been dust for two thousand 
years. Others love the modern simply because 
it is modern. 

We should have gratitude enough to acknowl¬ 
edge the obligations we are under to the great 
and heroic of antiquity, and independence enough 
not to believe what they said simply because they 
said it. 

With the idea that labor is the basis of progress 
goes the truth that labor must be free. The 
laborer must be a free man. 

The free man, working for wife and child, gets 
his head and hands in partnership. 

To do the greatest amount of work in the 
shortest space of time, is the problem of free labor. 

Slavery does the least work in the longest space 


of time. 

Free labor will give us wealth. Free thought 
will give us tri^th. 



62 


THE GHOSTS. 


Slowly but surely man is freeing his imagination 
of these sexless phantoms, of these cruel ghosts. 
Slowly but surely he is rising above the super¬ 
stitions of the past. He is learning to rely upon 
himself. He is beginning to find that labor is the 
only prayer that ought to be answered, and that 
hoping, toiling, aspiring, suffering men and women 
are of more importance than all the ghosts that 
ever wandered through the fenceless fields of 
space. 

The believers in ghosts claim still, that they are 
the only wise and virtuous people upon the earth ; 
claim still, that there is a difference between them 
and unbelievers so vast, that they will be infinitely 
rewarded, and the others infinitely punished. 

I ask you to-night, do the theories and doctrines 
of the theologians satisfy the heart or brain of the 
Nineteenth Century? 

Have the churches the confidence of mankind ? 

Does the merchant give credit to a man because 
he belongs to a church ? 

Does the banker loan money to a man because 
he is a Methodist or Baptist? 

Will a certificate of good standing in any church 
be taken as collateral security for one dollar? 



THE GHOSTS. 


CiS 

Will you take the word of a church member, or 
his note, or his oath, simply because he is a church 
member? 

Are the clergy, as a class, better, kinder and 
more generous to their families—to their fellow-men 

— than doctors, lawyers, merchants and farmers? 

Does a belief in ghosts and unreasonable things 
necessarily make people honest? 

When a man loses confidence in Moses, must 
the people lose confidence in him? 

Does not the credit system in morals breed 
extravagance in sin? 

Why send missionaries to other lands while 
every penitentiary in ours is filled with criminals ? 

£s it philosophical to say that they who do right 
carry a cross ? 

fs it a source of joy to think that perdition is 
the destination of nearly all of the children of men ? 

Is it worth while to quarrel about original sin 

— when there is so much copy? 

Does it pay to dispute about baptism, and the 
trinity, and predestination, and apostolic succession 
and the infallibility of churches, of popes and of 
books? Does all this do any good? 



64 


THE GHOSTS. 


Are the theologians welcomers of new truths? 
Are they noted for their candor? Do they treat 
an opponent with common fairness ? Are they 
investigators? Do they pull forward, or do they 
hold back? 

Is science indebted to the church for a solitary 
fact ? 

What church is an asylum for a persecuted 
truth ? 

What great reform has been inaugurated by the 
church ? 

Did the church abolish slavery? 

Has the church raised its voice against war? 

I used to think that there was in religion no real 
restraining force. Upon this point my mind has 
changed. Religion will prevent man from com¬ 
mitting artificial crimes and offenses. 

A man committed murder. The evidence was 
so conclusive that he confessed his guilt. 

He was asked why he killed his fellow-man. 

He replied: “For money.” 

“ Did you get any ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ How much ? ” 

“Fifteen cents.” 



THE GHOSTS. 


65 - 


“ What did you do with this money?” 

“ Spent it.” 

“ What for?” 

“ Liquor.” 

“What else did you find upon the dead man?”' 

“He had his dinner in a bucket — some meat 
and bread.” 

“What did you do with that?” 

“ I ate the bread.” 

“What did you do with the meat?” 

“ I threw it away.” 

“Why?” 

“ It was Friday.” 

Just to the extent that man has freed himself 
from the dominion of ghosts he has advanced. Just 
to the extent that he has freed himself from the 
tyrants of his own creation he has progressed. 
Just to the extent that he has investigated for him¬ 
self he has lost confidence in superstition. 

With knowledge obedience becomes intelligent 
acquiescence—it is no longer degrading. Acquies¬ 
cence in the understood — in the known — is the 
act of a sovereign, not of a slave. It ennobles, it 
does not degrade. 

5 



66 


TITE GHOSTS. 


Man has found that he must give liberty to 
others in order to have it himself. He has found 
that a master is also a slave;—that a tyrant is him¬ 
self a serf. He has found that governments should 
be founded and administered by man and for 
man; that the rights of all are equal; that the 
powers that be are not ordained by God; that 
woman is at least the equal of man; that men ex¬ 
isted before books; that religion is one of the 
phases of thought through which the world is pass¬ 
ing ; that all creeds were made by man; that every¬ 
thing is natural; that a miracle is an impossibility; 
that we know nothing of origin and destiny; that 
concerning the unknown we are all equally igno¬ 
rant ; that the pew has the right to contradict what 
the pulpit asserts; that man is responsible only to 
himself and those he injures, and that all have a 
right to think. 

True religion must be free. Without perfect 
liberty of the mind there can be no true religion. 
Without liberty the brain is a dungeon — the mind 
a convict. The slave may bow and cringe and 
crawl, but he cannot adore—he cannot love. 

True religion is the perfume of a free and grate- 
ful heart. True religion is a subordination of the 



THE GHOSTS. 


67 


passions to the perceptions of the intellect. True 
religion is not a theory—it is a practice. It is not 
a creed—it is a life. 

A theory that is afraid of investigation is unde¬ 
serving a place in the human mind. 

I do not pretend to tell what all the truth is. I 
do not pretend to have fathomed the abyss, nor to 
have floated on outstretched wings level with the 
dim heights of thought. I simply plead for freedom. 
I denounce the cruelties and horrors of slavery. I 
ask for light and air for the souls of men. I say, 
take off those chains—break those manacles—free 
those limbs—release that brain! I plead for the 
right to think—to reason—to investigate. I ask 
that the future may be enriched with the honest 
thoughts of men. I implore every human being to 
be a soldier in the army of progress. 

I will not invade the rights of others. You 
have no right to erect your toll-gate upon the 
highways of thought. You have no right to leap 
from the hedges of superstition and strike down 
the pioneers of the human race. You have no 
right to sacrifice the liberties of man upon the 
altars of ghosts. Believe what you may; preach 



68 


THE GHOSTS. 


what you desire; have all the forms and ceremonies 
you please; exercise your liberty in your own way 
but extend to all others the same right. 

I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds 
if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought 
to be dangerous — if they aver that doubt is a 
crime, then I attack them one and all, because they 
enslave the minds of men. 

I attack the monsters, the phantoms of imagi¬ 
nation that have ruled the world. I attack slavery. 
I ask for room — room for the human mind. 

Why should we sacrifice a real world that we 
have, for one we know not of? Why should we 
enslave ourselves? Why should we forge fetters 
for our own hands? Why should we be the slaves 
of phantoms. The darkness of barbarism was the 
womb of these shadows. In the light of science 
they cannot cloud the sky forever. They have 
reddened the hands of man with innocent blood. 
They made the cradle a curse, and the grave 
a place of torment. 

They blinded the eyes and stopped the ears of 
the human race. They subverted all ideas of 
justice by promising infinite rewards for finite 
virtues, and threatening infinite punishment for 
finite offenses. 



THE GHOSTS. 


69 


They filled the future with heavens and with 
hells, with the shining peaks of selfish joy and the 
lurid abysses of flame. For ages they kept the 
world in ignorance and awe, in want and misery, in 
fear and chains. 

I plead for light, for air, for opportunity. I 
plead for individual independence. I plead for the 
rights of labor and of thought. I plead for a 
chainless future. Let the ghosts go—justice 
remains. Let them disappear — men and women 
and children are left. Let the monsters fade away 
— the world is here with its hills and seas and 
plains, with its seasons of smiles and frowns, its 
spring of leaf and bud, its summer of shade and 
flower and murmuring stream; its autumn with the 
laden boughs, when the withered banners of the 
corn are still, and gathered fields are growing 
strangely wan; while death, poetic death, with 
hands that color what they touch, weaves in the 
Autumn wood her tapestries of gold and brown. 

The world remains with its winters and homes 
and firesides, where grow and bloom the virtues of 
our race. All these are left; and music, with its 
sad and thrilling voice, and all there is of art and 
song and hope and love and aspiration high. All 



TO 


THE GHOSTS. 


these remain. Let the ghosts go — we will worship 
them no more. 

Man is greater than these phantoms. Humanity 
is grander than all the creeds, than all the books. 
Humanity is the great sea, and these creeds, and 
books, and religions, are but the waves of a day. 
Humanity is the sky, and these religions and 
dogmas and theories are but the mists and clouds 
changing continually, destined finally to melt away. 

That which is founded upon slavery, and fear, 
and ignorance, cannot endure. In the religion of 
the future there will be men and women and 
children, all the aspirations of the soul, and all the 
tender humanities of the heart. 

Let the ghosts go. We will worship them no 
more. Let them cover their eyeless sockets with 
their fleshless hands and fade forever from the 
imaginations of men. 



THE LIBERTY OF 


MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 







THE LIBERTY OF 


MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 


Liberty sustains the same Relation to Mind that Space 
does to Matter. 

T HERE is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty 
is the child of intelligence. 

The history of man is simply the history of 
slavery, of injustice and brutality, together with 
the means by which he has, through the dead and 
desolate years, slowly and painfully advanced. He 
has been the sport and prey of priest and king, the 
food of superstition and cruel might. Crowned 
force has governed ignorance through fear. Hy¬ 
pocrisy and tyranny—two vultures — have fed 
upon the liberties of man. From all these there 
has been, and is, but one means of escape — intel¬ 
lectual development. Upon the back of industry 
has been the whip. Upon the brain have been the 
fetters of superstition. Nothing has been left 



74 


THE LIBERTY OF 


undone by the enemies of freedom. Every art 
and artifice, every cruelty and outrage has been 
practiced and perpetrated to destroy the rights of 
man. In this great struggle every crime has been 
rewarded and every virtue has been punished. 
Reading, writing, thinking and investigating have 
all been crimes. 

Every science has been an outcast. 

All the altars and all the thrones united to 
arrest the forward march of the human race. The 
king said that mankind must not work for them¬ 
selves. The priest said that mankind must not 
think for themselves. One forged chains for the 
hands, the other for the soul. Under this infamous 
regime the eagle of the human intellect was for 
ages a slimy serpent of hypocrisy. 

The human race was imprisoned. Through 
some of the prison bars came a few struggling rays 
of light. Against these bars Science pressed its 
pale and thoughtful face, wooed by the holy dawn 
of human advancement. Bar after bar was broken 
away. A few grand men escaped and devoted 
their lives to the liberation of their fellows. 

Only a few years ago there was a great 
awakening of the human mind. Men began to 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD . 


inquire by what right a crowned robber made 
them work for him? The man who asked this 
question was called a traitor. Others asked by 
what right does a robed hypocrite rule my thought ? 
Such men were called infidels. The priest said, 
and the king said, where is this spirit of investiga¬ 
tion to stop? They said then and they say now, 
that it is dangerous for man to be free. I deny it. 
Out on the intellectual sea there is room enough 
for every sail. In the intellectual air there is space 
enough for every wing. 

The man who does not do his own thinking is a 
slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellow- 
men. 

Every man should stand under the blue and 
stars, under the infinite flag of nature, the peer of 
every other man. 

Standing in the presence of the Unknown, all 
have the same right to think, and all are equally 
interested in the great questions of origin and 
destiny. All I claim, all I plead for, is liberty of 
thought and expression. That is all. I do not 
pretend to tell what is absolutely true, but what I 
think is true. I do not pretend to tell all the truth. 

I do not claim that I have floated level with the 



76 


THE LIBERTY OF 


heights of thought, or that I have descended to the 
very depths of things. I simply claim that what 
ideas I have, I have a right to express; and that 
any man who denies that right to me is an intel¬ 
lectual thief and robber. That is all. 

Take those chains from the human soul. Break 
those fetters. If I have no right to think, why 
have I a brain? If I have no such right, have 
three or four men, or any number, who may get 
together, and sign a creed, and build a house, and 
put a steeple upon it, and a bell in it — have they 
the right to think ? The good men, the good 
women are tired of the whip and lash in the realm 
of thought. They remember the chain and fagot 
with a shudder. They are free, and they give 
liberty to others. Whoever claims any right that 
he is unwilling to accord to his fellow-men is dis¬ 
honest and infamous. 

In the good old times, our fathers had the idea 
that they could make people believe to suit them. 
Our ancestors, in the ages that are gone, really 
believed that by force you could convince a man. 
You cannot change the conclusion of the brain by 
torture; nor by social ostracism. But I will tell 
you what you can do by these, and what you have 



MAN, WOMAN ANN CHILD . 


77 


done. You can make hypocrites by the million. 
You can make a man say that he has changed his 
mind; but he remains of the same opinion still. 
Put fetters all over him; crush his feet in iron 
boots; stretch him to the last gasp upon the holy 
rack; burn him, if you please, but his ashes will be 
of the same opinion still. 

Our fathers in the good old times — and the 
best thing I can say about them is, that they have 
passed away — had an idea that they could force 
men to think their way. That idea is still prevalent 
in many parts, even of this country. Even in our 
day some extremely religious people say, “We will 
not trade with that man; we will not vote for him; 
we will not hire him if he is a lawyer; we will die 
before we will take his medicine if he is a doctor; 
we will not invite him to dinner; we will socially 
ostracise him; he must come to our church; he 
must believe our doctrines; he must worship our 
god or we will not in any way contribute to his 
support.” 

In the old times of which I have spoken, 
they desired to make all men think exactly alike. 
All the mechanical ingenuity of the world cannot 
make two clocks run exactly alike, and how are you 



78 


THE LIBERTY OF 


going to make hundreds of millions of people, dif¬ 
fering in brain and disposition, in education and 
aspiration, in conditions and surroundings, each 
clad in a living robe of passionate flesh — how are 
you going to make them think and feel alike? If 
there is an infinite god, one who made us, and 
wishes us to think alike, why did he give a spoonful 
of brains to one, and a magnificent intellectual 
development to another? Why is it that we have 
all degrees of intelligence, from orthodoxy to 
genius, if it was intended that all should think and 
feel alike? 

I used to read in books how our fathers perse¬ 
cuted mankind. But I never appreciated it. I read 
it, but it did not burn itself into my soul. I did not 
really appreciate the infamies that have been com¬ 
mitted in the name of religion, until I saw the iron 
arguments that Christians used. I saw the Thumb¬ 
screw— two little pieces of iron, armed on the 
inner surfaces with protuberances, to prevent their 
slipping; through each end a screw uniting the two 
pieces. And when some man denied the efficacy 
of baptism, or may be said, “I do not believe that 
a fish ever swallowed a man to keep him from 
drowning,” then they put his thumb between these 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 


79 


pieces of iron and in the name of love and 
universal forgiveness, began to screw these pieces 
together. When this was done most men said, “1 
will recant.’ Probably I should have done the 
same. Probably I would have said: “Stop, I will 
admit anything that you wish; I will admit that 
there is one god or a million, one hell or a billion; 
suit yourselves ; but stop.” 

But there was now and then a man who would 
not swerve the breadth of a hair. There was now 
and then some sublime heart, willing to die for an 
intellectual conviction. Had it not been for such 
men, we would be savages to-night. Had it not 
been for a few brave, heroic souls in every age, we 
would have been cannibals, with pictures of wild 
beasts tattooed upon our flesh, dancing around 
some dried snake fetich. 

Let us thank every good and noble man who 
stood so grandly, so proudly, in spite of opposition, 
of hatred and death, for what he believed to be the 
truth. 

Heroism did not excite the respect of our 
fathers. The man who would not recant was not 
forgiven. They screwed the thumbscrews down to 
the last pang, and then threw their victim into some 



80 


THE LIBERTY OF 


dungeon, where, in the throbbing silence and dark¬ 
ness, he might suffer the agonies of the fabled 
damned. This was done in the name of love — in 
the name of mercy—in the name of the compas¬ 
sionate Christ. 

I saw, too, what they called the Collar of 
Torture. Imagine a circle of iron, and on the 
inside a hundred points almost as sharp as needles. 
This argument was fastened about the throat of 
the sufferer. Then he could not walk, nor sit 
down, nor stir without the neck being punctured by 
these points. In a little while the throat would 
begin to swell, and suffocation would end the 
agonies of that man. This man, it may be, had 
committed the crime of saying, with tears upon his 
cheeks, “I do not believe that God, the father of 
us all, will damn to eternal perdition any of the 
children of men.” 

I saw another instrument, called the Scaven¬ 
ger’s Daughter. Think of a pair of shears with 
handles, not only where they now are, but at the 
points as well, and just above the pivot that unites 
the blades, a circle of iron. In the upper handles 
the hands would be placed; in the lower, the feet; 
and through the iron ring, at the centre, the head 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD . 


81 


of the victim would be forced. In this condition,, 
he would be thrown prone upon the earth, and the 
strain upon the muscles produced such agony that 
insanity would in pity end his pain. 

This was done by gentlemen who said: “Who¬ 
soever smiteth thee upon one cheek turn to him the. 
other also.” 

I saw the Rack. This was a box like the bed of 
a wagon, with a windlass at each end, with levers,, 
and ratchets to prevent slipping; over each wind¬ 
lass went chains; some were fastened to the ankles, 
of the sufferer; others to his wrists. And then 
priests, clergymen, divines, saints, began turning 
these windlasses, and kept turning, until the ankles,, 
the knees, the hips, the shoulders, the elbows, the 
wrists of the victim were all dislocated, and the 
sufferer was wet with the sweat of agony. And 
they had standing by a physician to feel his pulse. 
What for? To save his life? Yes. In mercy? 
No; simply that they might rack him once again. 

This was done, remember, in the name of civil¬ 
ization ; in the name of law and order; in the name 
of mercy; in the name of religion; in the name 
of the most merciful Christ. 

Sometimes, when I read and think about these 



THE LIBERTY OE 


■82 

frightful things, it seems to me that I have suffered 
all these horrors myself. It seems sometimes, as 
though I had stood upon the shore of exile and 
gazed with tearful eyes toward home and native 
land; as though my nails had been torn from my 
hands, and into the bleeding quick needles had 
been thrust; as though my feet had been crushed 
in iron boots; as though I had been chained in the 
cell of the Inquisition and listened with dying ears 
for the coming footsteps of release; as though I 
had stood upon the scaffold and had seen the 
glittering axe fall upon me; as though I had been 
upon the rack and had seen, bending above me, 
the white faces of hypocrite priests; as though I 
had been taken from my fireside, from my wife and 
children, taken to the public square, chained; as 
though fagots had been piled about me; as though 
the flames had climbed around my limbs and 
scorched my eyes to blindness, and as though my 
ashes had been scattered to the four winds, by all 
the countless hands of hate. And when I so feel, 
I swear that while I live I will do what little I 
can to preserve and to augment the liberties of 
man, woman, and child. 

It is a question of justice, of mercy, of honesty, 




MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 


83 


of intellectual development. If there is a man in 
the world who is not willing to give to every human 
being every right he claims for himself, he is just so 
much nearer a barbarian than I am. It is a ques¬ 
tion of honesty. The man who is not willing to 
give to every other the same intellectual rights he 
claims for himself, is dishonest, selfish, and brutal. 

It is a question of intellectual development. 
Whoever holds another man responsible for his 
honest thought, has a deformed and distorted brain. 
It is a question of intellectual development. 

A little while ago I saw models of nearly every¬ 
thing that man has made. I saw models of all the 
water craft, from the rude dug-out in which floated 
a naked savage—one of our ancestors—a naked 
savage, with teeth two inches in length, with a 
spoonful of brains in the back of his head — I saw 
models of all the water craft of the world, from that 
dug-out up to a man-of-war, that carries a hundred 
guns and miles of canvas—from that dug-out to 
the steamship that turns its brave prow from the 
port of New York, with a compass like a con¬ 
science, crossing three thousand miles of billows 
without missing a throb or beat of its mighty iron 
heart. 



84 


1 HE LIBERTY OF 


I saw at the same time the weapons that man 
has made, from a club, such as was grasped by 
that same savage, when he crawled from his den in 
the ground and hunted a snake for his dinner; 
from that club to the boomerang, to the sword, to 
the cross-bow, to the blunderbuss, to the flint-lock, 
to the cap-lock, to the needle-gun, up to a cannon 
cast by Krupp, capable of hurling a ball weighing 
two thousand pounds through eighteen inches of 
solid steel. 

I saw, too, the armor from the shell of a turtle, 
that one of our brave ancestors lashed upon his 
breast when he went to fight for his country; the 
skin of a porcupine, dried with the quills on, which 
this same savage pulled over his orthodox head, 
up to the shirts of mail, that were worn in the 
Middle Ages, that laughed at the edge of the 
sword and defied the point of the spear; up to a 
monitor clad in complete steel. 

I saw at the same time, their musical instru¬ 
ments, from the tom-tom — that is, a hoop with a 
couple of strings of raw hide drawn across it — 
from that tom-tom, up to the instruments we 
have to-day, that make the common air blossom 
with melody. 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD . 


85 


I saw, too, their paintings, from a daub of 
yellow mud, to the great works which now adorn 
the galleries of the world. I saw also their sculp¬ 
ture, from the rude god with four legs, a half dozen 
arms, several noses, and two or three rows of ears, 
and one little, contemptible, brainless head, up to 
the figures of to-day — to the marbles that genius 
has clad in such a personality that it seems almost 
impudent to touch them without an introduction. 

I saw their books — books written upon skins of 
wild beasts — upon shoulder-blades of sheep — 
books written upon leaves, upon bark, up to the 
splendid volumes that enrich the libraries of our 
day. When I speak of libraries, I think of the 
remark of Plato: “ A house that has a library in 
it has a soul.” 

I saw their implements of agriculture, from a 
crooked stick that was attached to the horn of an 
ox by some twisted straw, to the agricultural imple¬ 
ments of this generation, that make it possible 
for a man to cultivate the soil without being an 
ignoramus. 

While looking upon these things I was forced to 
say that man advanced only as he mingled his 
thought with his labor,—only as he got into part- 



86 


THE LIBERTY OE 


nership with the forces of nature, — only as he 
learned to take advantage of his surroundings — 
only as he freed himself from the bondage of fear, 
—only as he depended upon himself—only as he 
lost confidence in the gods. 

I saw at the same time a row of human skulls, 
from the lowest skull that has been found, the 
Neanderthal skull—skulls from Central Africa, 
skulls from the Bushmen of Australia — skulls from 
the farthest isles of the Pacific sea — up to the best 
skulls of the last generation;—and I noticed that 
there was the same difference between those skulls 
that there was between the products of those skulls, 
and I said to myself, “After all, it is a simple ques¬ 
tion of intellectual development.” There was the 
same difference between those skulls, the lowest 
and highest skulls, that there was between the dug- 
out and the man-of-war and the steamship, between 
the club and the Krupp gun, between the yellow 
daub and the landscape, between the tom-tom and 
an opera by Verdi. 

The first and lowest skull in this row was the 
den in which crawled the base and meaner instincts 
of mankind, and the last was a temple in which 
dwelt joy, liberty, and love. 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD . 


87 


It is all a question of brain, of intellectual de¬ 
velopment. 

If we are nearer free than were our fathers, it 
is because we have better heads upon the average, 
and more brains in them. 

Now, I ask you to be honest with me. It makes 
no difference to you what I believe, nor what I wish 
to prove. I simply ask you to be honest. Divest 
your minds, for a moment at least, of all religious 
prejudice. Act, for a few moments, as though you 
were men and women. 

Suppose the king, if there was one, and the 
priest, if there was one, at the time this gentleman 
floated in the dug-out, and charmed his ears with 
the music of the tom-tom, had said: “That dug-out 
is the best boat that ever can be built by man; the 
pattern of that came from on high, from the great 
god of storm and flood, and any man who says that 
he can improve it by putting a' mast in it, with a sail 
upon it, is an infidel, and shall be burned at the 
stake ; ” what, in your judgment — honor bright — 
would have been the effect upon the circumnaviga¬ 
tion of the globe ? 

Suppose the king, if there was one, and the 
priest, if there was one — and I presume there was 




88 


THE LIBERTY OE 


a priest, because it was a very ignorant age — sup¬ 
pose this king and priest had said: “That tom-tom 
is the most beautiful instrument of music of which 
any man can conceive; that is the kind of music 
they have in heaven; an angel sitting upon the 
edge of a fleecy cloud, golden in the setting sun, 
playing upon that tom-tom, became so enraptured, 
so entranced with her own music, that in a kind of 
ecstasy she dropped it — that is how we obtained it; 
and any man who says that it can be improved by 
putting a back and front to it, and four strings, and 
a bridge, and getting a bow of hair with rosin, is a 
blaspheming wretch, and shall die the death,”—I 
ask you, what effect would that have had upon 
music? If that course had been pursued, would 
the human ears, in your judgment, ever have been 
enriched with the divine symphonies of Beethoven ? 

Suppose the king, if there was one, and the 
priest, had said: “That crooked stick is the best 
plow that can be invented: the pattern of that plow 
was given to a pious farmer in a holy dream, and 
that twisted straw is the ne plus ultra of all twisted 
things, and any man who says he can make an im¬ 
provement upon that plow, is an atheist;” what, in 
your judgment, would have been the effect upon 
the science of agriculture? 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD . 


89 


But the people said, and the king and priest 
said: “We want better weapons with which to kill 
our fellow Christians; we want better plows, better 
music, better paintings, and whoever will give us 
better weapons, and better music, better houses to 
live in, better clothes, we will robe him in wealth, 
and crown him with honor.’’ Every incentive was 
held out to every human being to improve these 
things. That is the reason the club has been 
changed to a cannon, the dug-out to a steamship, 
the daub to a painting; that is the reason that the 
piece of rough and broken stone finally became a 
glorified statue. 

You must not, however, forget that the gen¬ 
tleman in the dug-out, the gentleman who was 
enraptured with the music of the tom-tom, and 
cultivated his land with a crooked stick, had a 
religion of his own. That gentlemen in the dug- 
out was orthodox. He was never troubled with 
doubts. He lived and died settled in his mind. 
He believed in hell; and he thought he would be 
far happier in heaven, if he could just lean over and 
see certain people who expressed doubts as to the 
truth of his creed, gently but everlastingly broiled 
and burned. 



9v) 


THE LIBERTY OF 


It is a very sad and unhappy fact that this man 
has had a great many intellectual descendants. It 
is also an unhappy fact in nature, that the ignorant 
multiply much faster than the intellectual. This 
fellow in the dug-out believed in a personal devil. 
His devil had a cloven hoof, a long tail, armed with 
a fiery dart; and his devil breathed brimstone. 
This devil was at least the equal of God; not quite 
so stout but a little shrewder. And do you know 
there has not been a patentable improvement made 
upon that devil for six thousand years. 

This gentleman in the dug-out believed that God 
was a tyrant; that he would eternally damn the 
man who lived in accordance with his highest and 
grandest ideal. He believed that the earth was 
flat. He believed in a literal, burning, seething 
hell of fire and sulphur. He had also his idea of 
politics; and his doctrine was, might makes right. 
And it will take thousands of years before the 
world will reverse this doctrine, and believingly say, 
“Right makes might.” 

All I ask is the same privilege to improve upon 
that gentleman’s theology as upon his musical in¬ 
strument ; the same right to improve upon his 
politics as upon his dug-out. That is all. I ask 



MAN, WOMAN ANN CHILD. 


91 


for the human soul the same liberty in every direc¬ 
tion. That is the only crime I have committed. I 
say, let us think. Let each one express his 
thought. Let us become investigators, not follow¬ 
ers, not cringers and crawlers. If there is in 
heaven an infinite being, he never will be satisfied 
with the worship of cowards and hypocrites. Hon¬ 
est unbelief, honest infidelity, honest atheism, will 
be a perfume in heaven when pious hypocrisy, no 
matter how religious it may be outwardly, will be a 
stench. 

This is my doctrine: Give every other human 
being every right you claim for yourself. Keep 
your mind open to the influences of nature. Re¬ 
ceive new thoughts with hospitality. Let us 
advance. 

The religionist of to-day wants the ship of his 
soul to lie at the wharf of orthodoxy and rot in the 
sun. He delights to hear the sails of old opinions 
flap against the masts of old creeds. He loves to 
see the joints and the sides open and gape in the 
sun, and it is a kind of bliss for him to repeat again 
and again: “Do not disturb my opinions. Do not 
unsettle my mind; I have it all made up, and I 
want no infidelity. Let me go backward rather 
than forward/’ 



92 


THE LIBERTY OF 


As far as I am concerned I wish to be out on the 
high seas. I wish to take my chances with wind, 
and wave, and star. And I had rather go down in 
the glory and grandeur of the storm, than to rot in 
any orthodox harbor whatever. 

After all, we are improving from age to age. 
The most orthodox people in this country two 
hundred years ago would have been burned for the 
crime of heresy. The ministers who denounce me 
for expressing my thought would have been in the 
Inquisition themselves. Where once burned and 
blazed the bivouac fires of the army of progress, 
now glow the altars of the church. The religion¬ 
ists of our time are occupying about the same 
ground occupied by heretics and infidels of one 
hundred years ago. The church has advanced in 
spite, as it were, of itself. It has followed the 
army,of progress protesting and denouncing, and 
had to keep within protesting and denouncing dis¬ 
tance. If the church had not made great progress 
I could not express my thoughts. 

Man, however, has advanced just exactly in the 
proportion with which he has mingled his thought 
with his labor. The sailor, without control of the 
wind and wave, knowing nothing or very little of 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 


93 


the mysterious currents and pulses of the sea, is 
superstitious. So also is the agriculturist, whose 
prosperity depends upon something he cannot con¬ 
trol. But the mechanic, when a wheel refuses to 
turn, never thinks of dropping on his knees and 
asking the assistance of some divine power. He 
knows there is a reason. He knows that some¬ 
thing is too large or too small; that there is 
something wrong with his machine; and he goes 
to work and he makes it larger or smaller, here or 
there, until the wheel will turn. Now, just in pro¬ 
portion as man gets away from being, as it were, 
the slave of his surroundings, the serf of the 
elements,— of the heat, the frost, the snow, and 
the lightning, — just to the extent that he has got¬ 
ten control of his own destiny, just to the extent 
that he has triumphed over the obstacles of nature, 
he has advanced physically and intellectually. As 
man develops, he places a greater value upon his 
own rights. Liberty becomes a grander and diviner 
thing. As he values his own rights, he begins to 
value the rights of others. And when all men 
give to all others all the rights they claim for them¬ 
selves, this world will be civilized. 

A few years ago the people were afraid to 



94 


THE LIBERTY OF 


question the king, afraid to question the priest, 
afraid to investigate a creed, afraid to deny a book, 
afraid to denounce a dogma, afraid to reason, 
afraid to think. Before wealth they bowed to the 
very earth, and in the presence of titles they 
became abject. All this is slowly but surely 
changing. We no longer bow to men simply be¬ 
cause they are rich. Our fathers worshiped the 
golden calf. The worst you can say of an Amer¬ 
ican now is, he worships the gold of the calf. 
Even the calf is beginning to see this distinction. 

It no longer satisfies the ambition of a great 
man to be king or emperor. The last Napoleon 
was not satisfied with being the emperor of the 
French. He was not satisfied with having a circlet 
of gold about his head. He wanted some evidence 
that he had something of value within his head. 
So he wrote the life of Julius Caesar, that he might 
become a member of the French Academy. The 
emperors, the kings, the popes, no longer tower 
above their fellows. Compare King William with 
the philosopher Haeckel. The king is one of the 
anointed by the most high, as they claim — one 
upon whose head has been poured the divine 
petroleum of authority. Compare this king with 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 


95 


Haeckel, who towers an intellectual colossus above 
the crowned mediocrity. Compare George Eliot 
with Queen Victoria. The queen is clothed in 
garments given her by blind fortune and unreason¬ 
ing chance, while George Eliot wears robes of 
glory woven in the loom of her own genius. 

The world is beginning to pay homage to intel¬ 
lect, to genius, to heart. 

We have advanced. We have reaped the ben¬ 
efit of every sublime and heroic self-sacrifice, of 
every divine and brave act; and we should en¬ 
deavor to hand the torch to the next generation, 
having added a little to the intensity and glory of 
the flame. ; 

When I think of how much this world has suf¬ 
fered ; when I think of how long our fathers were 
slaves, of how they cringed and crawled at the foot 
of the throne, and in the dust of the altar, of how 
they abased themselves, of how abjectly they stood 
in the presence of superstition robed and crowned, 
I am amazed. 

This world has not been fit for a man to live in 
fifty years. It was not until the year 1808 that 
Great Britain abolished the slave trade. Up to 
that time her judges, sitting upon the bench in the 



96 


THE LIBERTY OF 


name of justice, her priests, occupying her pulpits, 
in the name of universal love, owned stock in the 
slave ships, and luxuriated upon the profits of 
piracy and murder. It was not until the same year 
that the United States of America abolished the 
slave trade between this and other countries, but 
carefully preserved it as between the States. It 
was not until the 28th day of August, 1833, that 
Great Britain abolished human slavery in her colo¬ 
nies; and it was not until the 1st day of January, 
1863, that Abraham Lincoln, sustained by the sub¬ 
lime and heroic North, rendered our flag pure as 
the sky in which it floats. 

Abraham Lincoln was, in my judgment, in many 
respects, the grandest man ever President of the 
United States. Upon his monument these words 
should be written: “Here sleeps the only man in 
the history of the world, who, having been clothed 
with almost absolute power, never abused it, except 
upon the side of mercy.” 

Think how long we clung to the institution of 
human slavery, how long lashes upon the naked 
back were a legal tender for labor performed. 
Think of it. The pulpit of this country deliber¬ 
ately and willingly, for a hundred years, turned the 
cross of Christ into a whipping post. 



9 

MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 97 

With every drop of my blood I hate and 
execrate every form of tyranny, every form of 
slavery. I hate dictation. I love liberty. 

What do I mean by liberty? By physical liberty 
I mean the right to do anything which does not 
interfere with the happiness of another. By intel¬ 
lectual liberty I mean the right to think right and 
the right to think wrong. Thought is the means 
by which we endeavor to arrive at truth. If we 
know the truth already, we need not think. All 
that can be required is honesty of purpose. You 
ask my opinion about anything; I examine it 
honestly, and when my mind is made up, what 
should I tell you? Should I tell you my real 
thought? What should I do? There is a book 
put in my hands. I am told this is the Koran; it 
was written by inspiration. I read it, and when I 
get through, suppose that I think in my heart and 
in my brain, that it is utterly untrue, and you then 
ask me, what do you think? Now, admitting that 
I live in Turkey, and have no chance to get any 
office unless I am on the side of the Koran, 
what should I say? Should I make a clean breast 
and say, that upon my honor I do not believe 
it? What would you think then of my fellow- 



98 


THE LIBERTY OF 


citizens if they said: “That man is dangerous, he 
is dishonest.” 

Suppose I read the book called the bible, and 
when I get through I make up my mind that it was 
written by men. A minister asks me, “ Did you 
read the bible?” I answer that I did. “ Do you 
think it divinely inspired?” What should I reply? 
Should I say to myself, “If I deny the inspiration 
of the scriptures, the people will never clothe me 
with power.” What ought I to answer? Ought I 
not to say like a man: “I have read it; I do not 
believe it.” Should I not give the real transcript 
of my mind ? Or should I turn hypocrite and pre¬ 
tend what I do not feel, and hate myself forever 
after for being a cringing coward. For my part I 
would rather a man would tell me what he honestly 
thinks. I would rather he would preserve his man¬ 
hood. I had a thousand times rather be a manly 
unbeliever than an unmanly believer. And if there 
is a judgment day, a time when all will stand before 
some supreme being, I believe I will stand higher, 
and stand a better chance of getting my case de¬ 
cided in my favor, than any man sneaking through 
life pretending to believe what he does not. 

I have made up my mind to say my say. I 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 


09 


shall do it kindly, distinctly; but I am going to do 
it. I know there are thousands of men who sub¬ 
stantially agree with me, but who are not in a con¬ 
dition to express their thoughts. They are poor; 
they are in business; and they know that should 
they tell their honest thought, persons will refuse 
to patronize them — to trade with them; they wish 
to get bread for their little children; they wish to 
take care of their wives; they wish to have homes 
and the comforts of life. Every such person is a 
certificate of the meanness of the community in 
which he resides. And yet I do not blame these 
people for not expressing their thought. I say to 
them: “Keep your ideas to yourselves; feed and 
clothe the ones you love; I will do your talking for 
you. The church can not touch, can not crush, 
can not starve, cannot stop or stay me; I will ex¬ 
press your thoughts.” 

As an excuse for tyranny, as a justification of 
slavery, the church has taught that man is totally 
depraved. Of the truth of that doctrine, the 
church has furnished the only evidence there is. 
The truth is, we are both good and bad. The 
worst are capable of some good deeds, and the 



100 


THE LIBERTY OF 


best are capable of bad. The lowest can rise, and 
the highest may fall. That mankind can be divided 
into two great classes, sinners and saints, is an 
utter falsehood. In times of great disaster, called 
it may be, by the despairing voices of women, men, 
denounced by the church as totally depraved, rush 
to death as to a festival. By such men, deeds 
are done so filled with self-sacrifice and generous 
daring, that millions pay to them the tribute, not 
only of admiration, but of tears. Above all creeds, 
above all religions, after all, is that divine thing,— 
Humanity; and now and then in shipwreck on the 
wide, wild sea, or ’mid the rocks and breakers of 
some cruel shore, or where the serpents of flame 
writhe and hiss, some glorious heart, some chivalric 
soul does a deed that glitters like a star, and gives 
the lie to all the dogmas of superstition. All these 
frightful doctrines have been used to degrade and 
to enslave mankind. 

Away, forever away with the creeds and books 
and forms and laws and religions that take from 
the soul liberty and reason. Down with the idea 
that thought is dangerous ! Perish the infamous 
doctrine that man can have property in man. Let 
us resent with indignation every effort to put a 



- 


MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 101 

chain upon our minds. If there is no God, cer¬ 
tainly we should not bow and cringe and crawl. If 
there is a God, there should be no slaves. 

LIBERTY OF WOMAN. 

Women have been the slaves of slaves; and in 
my judgment it took millions of ages for woman to 
come from the condition of abject slavery up to the 
institution of marriage. Let me say right here, that 
I regard marriage as the holiest institution among 
men. Without the fireside there is no human ad¬ 
vancement ; without the family relation there is no 
life worth living. Every good government is made 
up of good families. The unit of good government 
is the family, and anything that tends to destroy 
the family is perfectly devilish and infamous. I be¬ 
lieve in marriage, and I hold in utter contempt the 
opinions of those long-haired men and short-haired 
women who denounce the institution of marriage. 

The grandest ambition that any man can possi¬ 
bly have, is to so live, and so improve himself in 
heart and brain, as to be worthy of the love of some 
splendid woman; and the grandest ambition of any 
girl is to make herself worthy of the love and ado- 





102 THE LIBERTY OF 

ration of some magnificent man. That is my idea. 
There is no success in life without love and mar¬ 
riage. You had better be the emperor of one lov¬ 
ing and tender heart, and she the empress of yours, 
than to be king of the world. The man who has 
really won the love of one good woman in this 
world, I do not care if he dies in the ditch a beg¬ 
gar, his life has been a success. 

I say it took millions of years to come from the 
condition of abject slavery up to the condition of 
marriage. Ladies, the ornaments you wear upon 
your persons to-night are but the souvenirs of your 
mother’s bondage. The chains around your necks, 
and the bracelets clasped upon your white arms by 
the thrilled hand of love, have been changed by 
the wand of civilization from iron to shining, glit¬ 
tering gold. 

But nearly every religion has accounted for all 
the devilment in this world by the crime of woman. 
What a gallant thing that is! And if it is true, I 
had rather live with the woman I love in a world 
full of trouble, than to live in heaven with nobody 
but men. 

I read in a book — and I will say now that I 
cannot give the exact language, as my memory does 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD . 


103 


not retain the words, but I can give the substance 
— I read in a book that the Supreme Being con¬ 
cluded to make a world and one man; that he took 
some nothing and made a world and one man, and 
put this man in a garden. In a little while he 
noticed that the man got lonesome; that he wan¬ 
dered around as if he was waiting for a train. 
There was nothing to interest him; no news; no 
papers; no politics; no policy; and, as the devil 
had not yet made his appearance, there was no 
chance for reconciliation; not even for civil service 
reform. Well, he wandered about the garden in 
this condition, until finally the Supreme Being made 
up his mind to make him a companion. 

Having used up all the nothing he originally 
took in making the world and one man, he had to 
take a part of the man to start a woman with. So 
he caused a sleep to fall on this man — now under¬ 
stand me, I do not say this story is true. After 
the sleep fell upon this man, the Supreme Being 
took a rib, or as the French would call it, a cutlet, 
out of this man, and from that he made a woman. 
And considering the amount of raw material used, 
I look upon it as the most successful job ever per¬ 
formed. Well, after he got the woman done, she 



104 


THE LIBERTY OF 


was brought to the man ; not to see how she liked 
him, but to see how he liked her. He liked her, 
and they started housekeeping; and they were told 
of certain things they might do and of one thing 
they could not do — and of course they did it. I 
would have done it in fifteen minutes, and I know 
it. There wouldn’t have been an apple on that 
tree half an hour from date, and the limbs would 
have been full of clubs. And then they were 
turned out of the park and extra policemen were 
put on to keep them from getting back. 

Devilment commenced. The mumps, and the 
measles, and the whooping-cough, and the scarlet 
fever started in their race for man. They began to 
have the toothache, roses began to have thorns, 
snakes began to have poisoned teeth, and people 
began to divide about religion and politics, and the 
world has been full of trouble from that day to this. 

Nearly all of the religions of this world account 
for the existence of evil by such a story as that! 

I read in another book what appeared to be an 
account of the same transaction. It was written 
about four thousand years before the other. All 
commentators agree that the one that was written 
last was the original, and that the one that was 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD . 


105 


written first was copied from the one that was 
written last. But I would advise you all not to 
allow your creed to be disturbed by a little matter 
of four or five thousand years. In this other story, 
Brahma made up his mind to make the world and a 
man and woman. He made the world, and he 
made the man and then the woman, and put them 
on the island of Ceylon. According to the account 
it was the most beautiful island of which man can 
conceive. Such birds, such songs, such flowers and 
such verdure! And the branches of the trees were 
so arranged that when the wind swept through 
them every tree was a thousand ^Eolian harps. 

Brahma, when he put them there, said: “Let 
them have a period of courtship, for it is my desire 
and will that true love should forever precede 
marriage.’’ When I read that, it was so much 
more beautiful and lofty than the other, that I said 
to myself, “ If either one of these stories ever turns 
out to be true, I hope it will be this one.” 

Then they had their courtship, with the nightin¬ 
gale singing, and the stars shining, and the flowers 
blooming, and they fell in love. Imagine that 
courtship! No prospective fathers or mothers-in- 
law; no prying and gossiping neighbors; nobody 





106 


THE LIBERTY OF 


to say, “Young man, how do you expect to support 
her?” Nothing of that kind. They were married 
by the Supreme Brahma, and he said to them: 
“Remain here; you must never leave this island.” 
Well, after a little while the man — and his name 
was Adami, and the woman’s name was Heva — 
said to Heva: “ I believe I’ll look about a little.” 
He went to the northern extremity of the island 
where there was a little narrow neck of land con¬ 
necting it with the mainland, and the devil, who is 
always playing pranks with us, produced a mirage, 
and when he looked over to the mainland, such 
hills and vales, such dells and dales, such mountains 
crowned with snow, such cataracts clad in bows of 
glory did he see there, that he went back and told 
Heva: “The country over there is a thousand 
times better than this; let us migrate.” She, like 
every other woman that ever lived, said: “ Let well 
enough alone; we have all we want; let us stay 
here.” But he said “No, let us go;” so she fol¬ 
lowed him, and when they came to this narrow 
neck of land, he took her on his back like a gen¬ 
tleman, and carried her over. But the moment 
they got over they heard a crash, and looking back, 
discovered that this narrow neck of land had fallen 



MAN, WOMAN ANN CHILD . 


107 


into the sea. The mirage had disappeared, and 
there were naught but rocks and sand; and then 
the Supreme Brahma cursed them both to the 
lowest hell. 

Then it was that the man spoke,— and I have 
liked him ever since for it — “Curse me, but curse 
not her, it was not her fault, it was mine.” 

That’s the kind of man to start a world with. 

The Supreme Brahma said: “I will save her, 
but not thee.” And then she spoke out of her 
fullness of love, out of a heart in which there was 
love enough to make all her daughters rich in holy 
affection, and said: “If thou wilt not spare him, 
spare neither me; I do not wish to live without 
him; I love him.” Then the Supreme Brahma 
said—and I have liked him ever since I read it— 
“ I will spare you both and watch over you and 
your children forever.” 

Honor bright, is not that the better and grander 
story ? 

And from that same book I want to show you 
what ideas some of these miserable heathen had; 
the heathen we are trying to convert. We send 
missionaries over yonder to convert heathen there, 
and we send soldiers out on the plains to kill 



108 


THE LIBERTY OF 


heathen here. If we can convert the heathen, why 
not convert those nearest home ? Why not convert 
those we can get at? Why not convert those who 
have the immense advantage of the example of 
the average pioneer? But to show you the men 
we are trying to convert: In this book it says: 
“Man is strength, woman is beauty; man is cour¬ 
age, woman is love. When the one man loves the 
one woman and the one woman loves the one man, 
the very angels leave heaven and come and sit in 
that house and sing for joy.” 

They are the men we are converting. Think 
of it! I tell you, when I read these things, I say 
that love is not of any country; nobility does not 
belong exclusively to any race, and through all the 
ages, there have been a few great and tender souls 
blossoming in love and pity. 

In my judgment, the woman is the equal of the 
man. She has all the rights I have and one more, 
and that is the right to be protected. That is my 
doctrine. You are married; try and make the 
woman you love happy. Whoever marries simply 
for himself will make a mistake; but whoever loves 
a woman so well that he says “I will make her 
happy,” makes no mistake. And so with the 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 


109 


woman who says, “ I will make him happy.” There 
is only one way to be happy, and that is to make 
somebody else so, and you cannot be happy by 
going cross lots; you have got to go the regular 
turnpike road. 

If there is any man I detest, it is the man who 
thinks he is the head of a family — the man who 
thinks he is “boss!” The fellow in the dug-out 
used that word “boss;” that was one of his favorite 
expressions. 

Imagine a young man and a young woman 
courting, walking out in the moonlight, and the 
nightingale singing a song of pain and love, as 
though the thorn touched her heart—imagine them 
stopping there in the moonlight and starlight and 
song, and saying, “Now, here, let us settle who is 
‘boss! * ” I tell you it is an infamous word and an 
infamous feeling — I abhor a man who is “boss,” 
who is going to govern in his family, and when he 
speaks orders all the rest to be still as some mighty 
idea is about to be launched from his mouth. Do 
you know I dislike this man unspeakably? 

I hate above all things a cross man. What 
right has he to murder the sunshine of a day? 
What right has he to assassinate the joy of life? 



110 


THE LIBERTY OF 


When you go home you ought to go like a ray of 
light — so that it will, even in the night, burst out 
of the doors and windows and illuminate the 
darkness. Some men think their mighty brains 
have been in a turmoil; they have been thinking 
about who will be alderman from the fifth ward; 
they have been thinking about politics; great and 
mighty questions have been engaging their minds; 
they have bought calico at five cents or six, and 
want to sell it for seven. Think of the intellectual 
strain that must have been upon that man, and 
when he gets home everybody else in the house 
must look out for his comfort. A woman who has 
only taken care of five or six children, and one or 
two of them sick, has been nursing them and 
singing to them, and trying to make one yard of 
cloth do the work of two, she, of course, is fresh 
and fine and ready to wait upon this gentleman— 
the head of the family — the boss! 

Do you know another thing ? I despise a 
stingy man. I do not see how it is possible for a 
man to die worth fifty million of dollars, or ten 
million of dollars, in a city full of want, when he 
meets almost every day the withered hand of 
beggary and the white lips of famine. How a 



MAN, WOfMAN AND CHILD. 


Ill 


man can withstand all that, and hold in the clutch, 
of his greed twenty or thirty million of dollars, is 
past my comprehension. I do not see how he can 
do it. I should not think he could do it any more 
than he could keep a pile of lumber on the beach, 
where hundreds and thousands of men were 
drowning in the sea. 

Do you know that I have known men who 
would trust their wives with their hearts and their 
honor but not with their pocketbook; not with a 
dollar. When I see a man of that kind, I always 
think he knows which of these articles is the most 
valuable. Think of making your wife a beggar! 
Think of her having to ask you every day for a 
dollar, or for two dollars or fifty cents! “What 
did you do with that dollar I gave you last week?” 
Think of having a wife that is afraid of you! 
What kind of children do you expect to have with 
a begforar and a coward for their mother? Oh, I 
tell you if you have but a dollar in the world, and 
you have got to spend it, spend it like a king; 
spend it as though it were a dry leaf and you the 
owner of unbounded forests! That’s the way to 
spend it! I had rather be a beggar and spend my 
last dollar like a king, than be a king and spend 



112 


THE LIBERTY OF 


my money like a beggar! If it has got to go, let 
it go! 

Get the best you can for your family — try to 
look as well as you can yourself. When you used 
to go courting, how elegantly you looked! Ah, 
your eye was bright, your step was light, and you 
looked like a prince. Do you know that it is 
insufferable egotism in you to suppose a woman is 
going to love you always looking as slovenly as 
you can! Think of it! Any good woman on 
earth will be true to you forever when you do your 
level best. 

Some people tell me, “Your doctrine about 
loving, and wives, and all that, is splendid for the 
rich, but it won’t do for the poor.” I tell you 
to-night there is more love in the homes of the 
poor than in the palaces ol the rich. The meanest 
hut with love in it is a palace fit for the gods, and 
a palace without love is a den only fit for wild 
beasts. That is my doctrine! You cannot be so 
poor that you cannot help somebody. Good 
nature is the cheapest commodity in the world; 
and love is the only thing that will pay ten per 
cent, to borrower and lender both. Do not tell me 
that you have got to be rich! We have a false 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 


113 


standard of greatness in the United States. We 
think here that a man must be great, that he must 
be notorious; that he must be extremely wealthy, 
or that his name must be upon the putrid lips 
of rumor. It is all a mistake. It is not necessary 
to be rich or to be great, or to be powerful, to be 
happy. The happy man is the successful man. 

Happiness is the legal tender of the soul. 

Joy is wealth. 

A little while ago, I stood by the grave of the 
old Napoleon — a magnificent tomb of gilt and 
gold, fit almost for a dead deity — and gazed upon 
the sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble, where 
rest at last the ashes of that restless man. I 
leaned over the balustrade and thought about the 
career of the greatest soldier of the modern world. 

I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, 
contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon — I 
saw him putting down the mob in the streets of 
Paris — I saw him at the head of the army of Italy 
— I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with 
the tri-color in his hand—I saw him in Egypt in 
the shadows of the pyramids — I saw him conquer 
the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the 
eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo — at 
8 




114 


THE LIBERTY OF 


Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, where 
the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild 
blast scattered his legions like winter’s withered 
leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster 
— driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris — 
clutched like a wild beast—banished to Elba. I 
saw him escape and retake an empire by the force 
of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of 
Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to 
wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I 
saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed 
behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn 
sea. 

I thought of the orphans and widows he had 
made — of the tears that had been shed for his 
glory, and of the only woman who ever loved him, 
pushed from his heart by the cold hand of 
ambition. And I said I would rather have been a 
French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would 
rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over 
the door, and the grapes growing purple in the 
kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have 
been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my 
side, knitting as the day died out of the sky — with 
my children upon my knees and their arms about 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 


115 


me — I would rather have been that man and gone 
down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless 
dust, than to have been that imperial impersonation 
of force and murder. 

It is not necessary to be great to be happy; it 
is not necessary to be rich to be just and generous 
and to have a heart filled with divine affection. 
No matter whether you are rich or poor, treat your 
wife as though she were a splendid flower, and she 
will fill your life with perfume and with joy. 

And do you know, it is a splendid thing to 
think that the woman you really love will never 
grow old to you. Through the wrinkles of time, 
through the mask of years, if you really love her, 
you will always see the face you loved and won. 
And a woman who really loves a man does not see 
that he grows old; he is not decrepit to her; he 
does not tremble; he is not old; she always sees 
the same gallant gentleman who won her hand and 
heart. I like to think of it in that way; I like to 
think that love is eternal. And to love in that way 
and then go down the hill of life together, and as 
you go down, hear, perhaps, the laughter of 
grandchildren, while the birds of joy and love sing 
once more in the leafless branches of the tree 
of age. _ 



116 


THE LIBERTY OF 


I believe in the fireside. I believe in the 
democracy of home. I believe in the republicanism 
of the family. I believe in liberty, equality and 
love. 

THE LIBERTY OF CHILDREN. 

If women have been slaves, what shall I say of 
children; of the little children in alleys and 
sub-cellars; the little children who turn pale when 
they hear their fathers’ footsteps; little children who 
run away when they only hear their names called 
by the lips of a mother; little children — the 
children of poverty, the children of crime, the 
children of brutality, wherever they are — flotsam 
and jetsam upon the wild, mad sea of life — my 
heart goes out to them, one and all. 

I tell you the children have the same rights that 
we have, and we ought to treat them as though 
they were human beings. They should be reared 
with love, with kindness, with tenderness, and not 
with brutality. That is my idea of children 

When your little child tells a lie, do not rush at 
him as though the world were about to go into 
bankruptcy. Be honest with him. A tyrant father 
will have liars for his children; do you know that? 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 


117 


A lie is born of tyranny upon the one hand and 
weakness upon the other, and when you rush at a 
poor little boy with a club in your hand, of course 
he lies. 

I thank thee, Mother Nature, that thou hast put 
ingenuity enough in the brain of a child, when 
attacked by a brutal parent, to throw up a little 
breastwork in the shape of a lie. 

When one of your children tells a lie, be honest 
with him; tell him that you have told hundreds of 
them yourself. Tell him it is not the best way; 
that you have tried it. Tell him as the man did in 
Maine when his boy left home: “John, honesty is 
the best policy; I have tried both.” Be honest 
with him. Suppose a man as much larger than you 
as you are larger than a child five years old, should 
come at you with a liberty pole in his hand, and in 
a voice of thunder shout, “Who broke that plate?” 
There is not a solitary one of you who would not 
swear you never saw it, or that it was cracked 
when you got it. Why not be honest with these 
children? Just imagine a man who deals in stocks 
whipping his boy for putting false rumors afloat! 
Think of a lawyer beating his own flesh and blood 
for evading the truth when he makes half of his 




118 


THE LIBERTY OF 


own living that way! Think of a minister 
punishing his child for not telling all he thinks! 
Just think of it! 

When your child commits a wrong, take it in 
your arms; let it feel your heart beat against its 
heart; let the child know that you really and truly 
and sincerely love it. Yet some Christians, good 
Christians, when a child commits a fault, drive it 
from the door and say: “Never do you darken this 
house again.” Think of that! And then these 
same people will get down on their knees and ask 
God to take care of the child they have driven 
from home. I will never ask God to take care of 
my children unless I am doing my level best in that 
same direction. 

But I will tell you what I say to my children : 
“Go where you will; commit what crime you may; 
fall to what depth of degradation you may; you 
can never commit any crime that will shut my door, 
my arms, or my heart to you. As long as I live 
you shall have one sincere friend.” 

Do you know that I have seen some people 
who acted as though they thought that when the 
Saviour said “ Suffer little children to come unto me, 
for of such is the kingdom of heaven,” he had a 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 


119 


raw-hide under his mantle, and made that remark 
simply to get the children within striking distance? 

I do not believe in the government of the lash. 
If any one of you ever expects to whip your chil¬ 
dren again, I want you to have a photograph taken 
of yourself when you are in the act, with your face 
red with vulgar anger, and the face of the little 
child, with eyes swimming in tears and the little 
chin dimpled with fear, like a piece of water struck 
by a sudden cold wind. Have the picture taken. 
If that little child should die, I cannot think of a 
sweeter way to spend an autumn afternoon than to 
go out to the cemetery, when the maples are clad 
in tender gold, and little scarlet runners are coming, 
like poems of regret, from the sad heart of the 
ear th — and sit down upon the grave and look at 
that photograph, and think of the flesh now dust 
that you beat. I tell you it is wrong; it is no way 
to raise children! Make your home happy. Be 
honest with them. Divide fairly with them in 
everything. 

Give them a little liberty and love, and you can 
not drive them out of your house. They will want 
to stay there. Make home pleasant. Let them 
play any game they wish. Do not be so foolish as 



120 


THE LIBERTY OF 


to say: “You may roll balls on the ground, but you 
must not roll them on a green cloth. You may 
knock them with a mallet, but you must not push 
them with a cue. You may play with little pieces 
of paper which have ‘ authors ’ written on them, but 
you must not have ‘cards.’” Think of it! “You 
may go to a minstrel show where people blacken 
themselves and imitate humanity below them, but 
you must not go to a theatre and see the characters 
created by immortal genius put upon the stage.” 
Why? Well, I can’t think of any reason in the 
world except “minstrel” is a word of two syllables, 
and “theatre” has three. 

Let children have some daylight at home if you 
want to keep them there, and do not commence at 
the cradle and shout “ Do n’t! ” “ Do n’t! ” “ Stop ! ” 
That is nearly all that is said to a child from 
the cradle until he is twenty-one years old, and 
when he comes of age other people begin saying 
“Don’t!” And the church says “Don’t?” and 
the party he belongs to says “ Don’t! ” 

I despise that way of going through this world. 
Let us have liberty—just a little. Call me infidel, 
call me atheist, call me what you will, I intend so to 
treat my children, that they can come to my grave 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 


121 


and truthfully say: “He who sleeps here never 
gave us a moment of pain. From his lips, now 
dust, never came to us an unkind word.” 

People justify all kinds of tyranny towards 
children upon the ground that they are totally 
depraved. At the bottom of ages of cruelty lies 
this infamous doctrine of total depravity. Religion 
contemplates a child as a living crime — heir to an 
infinite curse — doomed to eternal fire. 

In the olden time, they thought some days were 
too good for a child to enjoy himself. When I was 
a boy Sunday was considered altogether too holy 
to be happy in. Sunday used to commence then 
when the sun went down on Saturday night. We 
commenced at that time for the purpose of getting 
a good ready, and when the sun fell below the 
horizon on Saturday evening, there was a darkness 
fell upon the house ten thousand times deeper 
than that of night. Nobody said a pleasant word ; 
nobody laughed; nobody smiled; the child that 
looked the sickest was regarded as the most pious. 
That night you could not even crack hickory nuts. 
If you were caught chewing gum it was only 
another evidence of the total depravity of the 
human heart. It was an exceedingly solemn night. 



122 


THE LIBERTY OF 


Dyspepsia was in the very air you breathed. 
Everybody looked sad and mournful. I have 
noticed all my life that many people think they 
have religion when they are troubled with dys¬ 
pepsia. If there could be found an absolute 
specific for that disease, it would be the hardest 
blow the church has ever received. 

On Sunday morning the solemnity had simply 
increased. Then we went to church. The 
minister was in a pulpit about twenty feet high, 
with a little sounding-board above him, and he 
commenced at “firstly’’ and went on and on and 
on to about “ twenty-thirdly.” Then he made a 
few remarks by way of application; and then took 
a general view of the subject, and in about two 
hours reached the last chapter in Revelations. 

In those days, no matter how cold the weather 
was, there was no fire in the church. It was 
thought to be a kind of sin to be comfortable while 
you were thanking God. The first church that 
ever had a stove in it in New England, divided on 
that account. So the first church in which they 
sang by note, was torn in fragments. 

After the sermon we had an intermission. 
Then came the catechism with the chief end of 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 


123 


man. We went through with that. We sat in a 
row with our feet coming in about six inches of the 
floor. The minister asked us if we knew that we 
all deserved to go to hell, and we all answered 
“Yes.” Then we were asked if we would be will¬ 
ing to go hell if it was God’s will, and every little 
liar shouted “Yes.” Then the same sermon was 
preached once more, commencing at the other end 
and going back. After that, we started for home, 
sad and solemn—overpowered with the wisdom 
displayed in the scheme of the atonement. When 
we got home, if we had been good boys, and the 
weather was warm, sometimes they would take us 
out to the graveyard to cheer us up a little. It did 
cheer me. When I looked at the sunken tombs 
and the leaning stones, and read the half-effaced 
inscriptions through the moss of silence and forget¬ 
fulness, it was a great comfort. The reflection 
came to my mind that the observance of the Sab¬ 
bath could not last always. Sometimes they would 
sing that beautiful' hymn in which occurs these 
cheerful lines: 

“Where congregations ne’er break up, 

And Sabbaths never end.” 

These lines, I think, prejudiced me a little 



124 


THE LIBERTY OF 


against even heaven. Then we had good books 
that we read on Sundays by way of keeping us 
happy and contented. There were Milners’ 
“History of the Waldenses,” Baxter’s “Call to the 
Unconverted,” Yahn’s “Archaeology of the Jews,” 
and Jenkins’ “On the Atonement.” I used to read 
Jenkins’ “On the Atonement.” I have often 
thought that an atonement would have to be 
exceedingly broad in its provisions to cover the 
case of a man who would write a book like that 
for a boy. 

But at last the Sunday wore away, and the 
moment the sun went down we were free. Be¬ 
tween three and four o’clock we would go out to 
see how the sun was coming on. Sometimes it 
seemed to me that it was stopping from pure 
meanness. But finally it went down. It had to. 
And when the last rim of light sank below the 
horizon, off would go our caps, and we would give 
three cheers for liberty once more. 

Sabbaths used to be prisons. Every Sunday 
was a Bastile. Every Christian was a kind of turn¬ 
key, and every child was a prisoner,—a convict. 
In that dungeon, a smile was a crime. 



MAN y WOMAN AND CHILD. 


125 


It was thought wrong for a child to laugh upon 
this holy day. Think of that! 

A little child would go out into the garden, and 
there would be a tree laden with blossoms, and the 
little fellow would lean against it, and there would 
be a bird on one of the boughs, singing and swing¬ 
ing, and thinking about four little speckled eggs, 
warmed by the breast of its mate,— singing and 
swinging, and the music in happy waves rippling 
out of its tiny throat, and the flowers blossoming, 
the air filled with perfume and the great white 
clouds floating in the sky, and the little boy would 
lean up against that tree and think about hell and 
the worm that never dies. 

I have heard them preach, when I sat in the 
pew and my feet did not touch the floor, about the 
final home of the unconverted. In order to impress 
upon the children the length of time they would 
probably stay if they settled in that country, the 
preacher would frequently give us the following 
illustration: “Suppose that once in a billion years 
a bird should come from some far-distant planet, 
and carry off in its little bill a grain of sand, a time 
would finally come when the last atom composing 
this earth would be carried away; and when this 



126 


THE LIBERTY OF 


last atom was taken, it would not even be sun 
up in hell.” Think of such an infamous doctrine 
being taught to children! 

The laugh of a child will make the holiest day 
more sacred still. Strike with hand of fire, O 
weird musician, thy harp strung with Apollo’s 
golden hair; fill the vast cathedral aisles with 
symphonies sweet and dim, deft toucher, of the 
organ keys; blow, bugler, blow, until thy silver 
notes do touch and kiss the moonlit waves, and 
charm the lovers wandering ’mid the vine-clad hills. 
But know, your sweetest strains are discords all, 
compared with childhood’s happy laugh—the laugh 
that fills the eyes with light and every heart with 
joy. O rippling river of laughter, thou art the 
blessed boundary line between the beasts and men; 
and every wayward wave of thine doth drown some 
fretful fiend of care. O Laughter, rose-lipped 
daughter of Joy, there are dimples enough in thy 
cheeks to catch and hold and glorify all the tears 
of grief. 

And yet the minds of children have been 
polluted by this infamous doctrine of eternal 
punishment. I denounce it to-day as a doctrine, 
the infamy of which no language is sufficient to 
express. 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD . 


Where did that doctrine of eternal punishment 
for men and women and children come from? It 
came from the low and beastly skull of that wretch 
in the dug-out. Where did he get it? It was a 
souvenir from the animals. The doctrine of eternal 
punishment was born in the glittering eyes of 
snakes — snakes that hung in fearful coils watching 
for their prey. It was born of the howl and bark 
and growl of wild beasts. It was born of the grin 
of hyenas and of the depraved chatter of unclean 
baboons. I despise it with every drop of my 
blood. Tell me there is a God in the serene 
heavens that will damn his children for the 
expression of an honest belief! More men have 
died in their sins, judged by your orthodox creeds, 
than there are leaves on all the forests in the wide 
world ten thousand times over. Tell me these men 
are in hell; that these men are in torment; that 
these children are in eternal pain, and ihat they 
are to be punished forever and forever! I denounce 
this doctrine as the most infamous of lies. 

When the great ship containing the hopes and 
aspirations of the world, when the great ship 
freighted with mankind goes down in the night of 
death, chaos and disaster, I am willing to go 



128 


THE LIBERTY OF 


down with the ship. I will not be guilty of the 
ineffable meanness of paddling away in some or¬ 
thodox canoe. I will go down with the ship, with 
those who love me, and with those whom I have 
loved. If there is a God who will damn his 
children forever, I would rather go to hell than to 
go to heaven and keep the society of such an in¬ 
famous tyrant. I make my choice now. I despise 
that doctrine. It has covered the cheeks of this 
world with tears. It has polluted the hearts of 
children, and poisoned the imaginations of men. It 
has been a constant pain, a perpetual terror to 
every good man and woman and child. It has 
filled the good with horror and with fear; but it has 
had no effect upon the infamous and base. It has 
wrung the hearts of the tender: it has furrowed the 
cheeks of the good. This doctrine never should 
be preached again. What right have you, sir, Mr. 
clergyman, you, minister of the gospel, to stand at 
the portals of the tomb, at the vestibule of eternity, 
and fill the future with horror and with fear ? I do 
not believe this doctrine: neither do you. If you 
did, you could not sleep one moment. Any man 
who believes it, and has within his breast a decent, 
throbbing heart, will go insane. A man who 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD . 


129 


believes that doctrine and does not go insane has 
the heart of a snake and the conscience of a 
hyena. 

Jonathan Edwards, the dear old soul, who, if 
his doctrine is true, is now in heaven rubbing his 
holy hands with glee, as he hears the cries of the 
damned, preached this doctrine; and he said: 
“Can the believing husband in heaven be happy 
with his unbelieving wife in hell? Can the 
believing father in heaven be happy with his. 
unbelieving children in hell? Can the loving wife 
in heaven be happy with her unbelieving husband 
in hell?” And he replies: “ I tell you, yea. Such 
will be their sense of justice, that it will increase 
rather than diminish their bliss.” There is no wild 
beast in the jungles of Africa whose reputation 
would not be tarnished by the expression of such a 
doctrine. 

These doctrines have been taught in the name 
of religion, in the name of universal forgiveness, in 
the name of infinite love and charity. Do not, I 
pray you, soil the minds of your children with this 
dogma. Let them read for themselves; let them 
think for themselves. 

Do not treat your children like orthodox posts 


9 



130 


THE LIBERTY OF 


to be set in a row. Treat them like trees that need 
light and sun and air. Be fair and honest with 
them; give them a chance. Recollect that their 
rights are equal to yours. Do not have it in your 
mind that you must govern them ; that they must 
obey. Throw away forever the idea of master and 
slave. 

In old times they used to make the children go 
to bed when they were not sleepy, and get up when 
they were sleepy. I say let them go to bed when 
they are sleepy, and get up when they are not 
sleepy. 

But you say, this doctrine will do for the rich 
but not for the poor. Well, if the poor have to 
waken their children early in the morning it is as 
easy to wake them with a kiss as with a blow. 
Give your children freedom; let them preserve 
their individuality. Let your children eat what 
they desire, and commence at the end of a dinner 
they like. That is their business and not yours. 
They know what they wish to eat. If they are 
given their liberty from the first, they know what 
they want better than any doctor in the world can 
prescribe. Do you know that all the improvement 
that has ever been made in the practice of medicine 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD . 


131 


has been made by the recklessness of patients and 
not by the doctors? For thousands and thousands 
of years the doctors would not let a man suffering 
from fever have a drop of water. Water they 
looked upon as poison. But every now and then 
some man got reckless and said, “ I had rather die 
than not to slake my thirst.” Then he would drink 
two or three quarts of water and get well. And 
when the doctor was told of what the patient had 
done, he expressed great surprise that he was still 
alive, and complimented his constitution upon being 
able to bear such a frightful strain. The reckless 
men, however, kept on drinking the water, and 
persisted in getting well. And finally the doctors 
said: “In a fever, water is the very best thing you 
can take.” So, I have more confidence in the 
voice of nature about such things than I have in 
the conclusions of the medical schools. 

Let your children have freedom and they will 
fall into your ways; they will do substantially as 
you do; but if you try to make them, there is some 
magnificent, splendid thing in the human heart that 
refuses to be driven. And do you know that it is 
the luckiest thing that ever happened for this 
world, that people are that way. What would have 



132 


THE LIBERTY OF 


become of the people five hundred years ago if 
they had followed strictly the advice of * the 
doctors? They would have all been dead. What 
would the people have been, if at any age of the 
world they had followed implicitly the direction of 
the church? They would have all been idiots. It 
is a splendid thing that there is always some grand 
man who will not mind, and who will think for 
himself. 

I believe in allowing the children to think for 
themselves. I believe in the democracy of the 
family. If in this world there is anything splendid, 
it is a home where all are equals. 

You will remember that only a few years ago 
parents would tell their children to “let their 
victuals stop their mouths.” They used to eat as 
though it were a religious ceremony — a very 
solemn thing. Life should not be treated as a 
solemn matter. I like to see the children at 
table, and hear each one telling of the wonderful 
things he has seen and heard. I like to hear the 
clatter of knives and forks and spoons mingling 
with their happy voices. I had rather hear it than 
any opera that was ever put upon the boards. Let 
the children have liberty. Be honest and fair with 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 


133 


them; be just; be tender, and they will make you 
rich in love and joy. 

Men are oaks, women are vines, children are 
flowers. 

The human race has been guilty of almost 
countless crimes; but I have some excuse for 
mankind. This world, after all, is not very well 
adapted to raising good people. In the first place, 
nearly all of it is water. It is much better adapted 
to fish culture than to the production of folks. Of 
that portion which is land not one-eighth has 
suitable soil and climate to produce great men and 
women. You cannot raise men and women of 
genius, without the proper soil and climate, any 
more than you cart raise corn and wheat upon the 
ice fields of the Arctic sea. You must have the 
necessary conditions and surroundings. Man is 
a product; you must have the soil and food. The 
obstacles presented by nature must not be so 
great that man cannot, by reasonable industry and 
courage, overcome them. There is upon this world 
only a narrow belt of land, circling zigzag the 
globe, upon which you can produce men and 
women of talent. In the Southern Hemisphere 



134 


7HE LIBERTY OF 


the real climate that man needs falls mostly upon 
the sea, and the result is, that the southern half of 
our world has never produced a man or woman of 
great genius. In the far north there is no genius 
— it is too cold. In the far south there is no 
genius — it is too warm. There must be winter, 
and there must be summer. In a country where 
man needs no coverlet but a cloud, revolution is 
his normal condition. Winter is the mother of 
industry and prudence. Above all, it is the mother 
of the family relation. Winter holds in its icy arms 
the husband and wife and the sweet children. If 
upon this earth we ever have a glimpse of heaven, 
it is when we pass a home in winter, at night, and 
through the windows, the curtains drawn aside, we 
see the family about the pleasant hearth; the old 
lady knitting; the cat playing with the yarn; the 
children wishing they had as many dolls or dollars 
or knives or somethings, as there are sparks going 
out to join the roaring blast; the father reading 
and smoking, and the clouds rising like incense 
from the altar of domestic joy. I never passed 
such a house without feeling that I had received a 
benediction. 

Civilization, liberty, justice, charity, intellectual 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 


135 


advancement, are all flowers that blossom in the 
drifted snow. 

I do not know that I can better illustrate the 
great truth that only part of the world is adapted 
to the production of great men and women than by 
calling your attention to the difference between 
vegetation in valleys and upon mountains. In the 
valley you find the oak and elm tossing their 
branches defiantly to the storm, and as you advance 
up the mountain side the hemlock, the pine, the 
birch, the spruce, the fir, and finally you come to 
little dwarfed trees, that look like other trees seen 
through a telescope reversed — every limb twisted 
as though in pain — getting a scanty subsistence 
from the miserly crevices of the rocks. You 
go on and on, until at last the highest crag is 
freckled with a kind of moss, and vegetation ends. 
You might as well try to raise oaks and elms where 
the mosses grow, as to raise great men and great 
women where their surroundings are unfavorable. 
You must have the proper climate and soil. 

A few years ago we were talking about the 
annexation of Santo Domingo to this country. I 
was in Washington at the time. I was opposed to 
it. I was told that it was a most delicious climate; 



136 


THE LIBERTY OF 


that the soil produced everything. But I said: 
“We do not want it; it is not the right kind of 
country in which to raise American citizens. Such 
a climate would debauch us. You might go there 
with five thousand Congregational preachers, five 
thousand ruling elders, five thousand professors in 
colleges, five thousand of the solid men of Boston 
and their wives; settle them all in Santo Domingo, 
and you will see the second generation riding upon 
a mule, bareback, no shoes, a grapevine bridle, hair 
sticking out at the top of their sombreros, with a 
rooster under each arm, going to a cock fight on 
Sunday.” Such is the influence of climate. 

Science, however, is gradually widening the 
area within which men of genius can be produced. 
We are conquering the north with houses, clothing, 
food and fuel. We are in many ways overcoming 
the heat of the south. If we attend to this world 
instead of another, we may in time cover the land 
with men and women of genius. 

I have still another excuse. I believe that man 
came up from the lower animals. I do not say this 
as a fact. I simply say I believe it to be a fact. 
Upon that question I stand about eight to seven, 
which, for all practical purposes, is very near a 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 


137 


certainty. When I first heard of that doctrine I 
did not like it. My heart was filled with sympathy 
for those people who have nothing to be proud 
of except ancestors. I thought, how terrible 
this will be upon the nobility of the old world. 
Think of their being forced to trace their ancestry 
back to the duke Orang Outang, or to the princess 
Chimpanzee. After thinking it all over, I came to 
the conclusion that I liked that doctrine. I became 
convinced in spite of myself. I read about 
rudimentary bones and muscles. I was told that 
everybody had rudimentary muscles extending 
from the ear into the cheek. I asked: “What are 
they?” I was told: “They are the remains of 
muscles; that they became rudimentary from lack 
of use; they went into bankruptcy. They are the 
muscles with which your ancestors used to flap 
their ears.” I do not now so much wonder that 
we once had them as that we have outgrown them. 

After all I had rather belong to a race that 
started from the skulless vertebrates in the dim 
Laurentian seas, vertebrates wiggling without 
knowing why they wiggled, swimming without 
knowing where they were going, but that in some 
way began to develop, and began to get a little 



138 


THE LIBERTY OF 


higher and a little higher in the scale of existence; 
that came up by degrees through millions of ages 
through all the animal world, through all that crawls 
and swims and floats and climbs and walks, and 
finally produced the gentleman in the dug-out; and 
then from this man, getting a little grander, and 
each one below calling every one above him a 
heretic, calling every one who had made a little 
advance an infidel or an atheist—for in the history 
of this world the man who is ahead has always 
been called a heretic — I would rather come from a 
race that started from that skulless vertebrate, and 
came up and up and up and finally produced 
Shakespeare, the man who found the human intel¬ 
lect dwelling in a hut, touched it with the wand of 
his genius and it became a palace domed and 
pinnacled; Shakespeare, who harvested all the 
fields of dramatic thought, and from whose day to 
this, there have been only gleaners of straw and 
chaff—I would rather belong to that race that 
commenced a skulless vertebrate and produced 
Shakespeare, a race that has before it an infinite 
future, with the angel of progress leaning from the 
far horizon, beckoning men forward, upward and 
onward forever—I had rather belong to such a 



MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD . 


139 


race, commencing there, producing this, and with 
that hope, than to have sprung from a perfect pair 
upon which the Lord has lost money every moment 
from that day to this. 

CONCLUSION. 

I have given you my honest thought. Surely 
investigation is better than unthinking faith. 
Surely reason is a better guide than fear. This 
world should be controlled by the living, not by 
the dead. The grave is not a throne, and a 
corpse is not a king. Man should not try to live 
on ashes. 

The theologians dead, knew no more than the 
theologians now living. More than this cannot be 
said. About this world little is known,— about 
another world, nothing. 

Our fathers were intellectual serfs, and their 
fathers were slaves. The makers of our creeds 
were ignorant and brutal. Every dogma that we 
have, has upon it the mark of whip, the rust of 
chain, and the ashes of fagot. 

Our fathers reasoned with instruments of tor¬ 
ture. They believed in the logic of fire and sword. 
They hated reason. They despised thought. 
They abhorred liberty. 



140 


THE LIBERTY OF 


Superstition is the child of slavery. Free 
thought will give us truth. When all have the 
right to think and to express their thoughts, 
every brain will give to all the best it has. The 
world will then be filled with intellectual wealth. 

As long as men and women are afraid of the 
church, as long as a minister inspires fear, as long 
as people reverence a thing simply because they 
do not understand it, as long as it is respectable 
to lose your self-respect, as long as the church 
has power, as long as mankind worship a book, 
just so long will the world be filled with intel¬ 
lectual paupers and vagrants, covered with the 
soiled and faded rags of superstition. 

As long as woman regards the bible as the 
charter of her rights, she will be the slave of man. 
The bible was not written by a woman. Within its 
lids there is nothing but humiliation and shame 
for her. She is regarded as the property of man. 
She is made to ask forgiveness for becoming a 
mother. She is as much below her husband, as 
her husband is below Christ. She is not allowed 
to speak. The gospel is too pure to be spoken by 
her polluted lips. Woman should learn in silence. 

In the bible will be found no description of a 



MAN, WOMAN ANN CHILD . 


141 


civilized home. The free mother, surrounded by 
free and loving children, adored by a free man, her 
husband, was unknown to the inspired writers of 
the bible. They did not believe in the democracy 
of home — in the republicanism of the fireside. 

These inspired gentlemen knew nothing of the 
rights of children. They were the advocates of 
brute force—the disciples of the lash. They knew 
nothing of human rights. Their doctrines have 
brutalized the homes of millions, and filled the 
eyes of infancy with tears. 

Let us free ourselves from the tyranny of a 
book, from the slavery of dead ignorance, from the 
aristocracy of the air. 

There has never been upon the earth a gener¬ 
ation of free men and women. It is not yet time 
to write a creed. Wait until the chains are broken 
— until dungeons are not regarded as temples. 
Wait until solemnity is not mistaken for wisdom — 
until mental cowardice ceases to be known as rev¬ 
erence. Wait until the living are considered the 
equals of the dead — until the cradle takes prece¬ 
dence of the coffin. Wait until what we know can 
be spoken without regard to what others may 
believe. Wait until teachers take the place of 



142 


THE LIBERTY OF MAN, ETC. 


preachers — until followers become investigators. 
Wait until the world is free before you write a 
creed. 

In this creed there will be but one word — 
Liberty. 

Oh Liberty, float not forever in the far horizon 
— remain not forever in the dream of the enthu¬ 
siast, the philanthropist and poet, but come and 
make thy home among the children of men! 

I know not what discoveries, what inventions, 
what thoughts may leap from the brain of the 
world. I know not what garments of glory may 
be woven by the years to come. I cannot dream 
of the victories to be won upon the fields of 
thought; but I do know, that coming from the 
infinite sea of the future, there will never touch 
this “bank and shoal of time” a richer gift, a 
rarer blessing than liberty for man, for woman, and 
for child. 



1776. 

THE DECLARATION OF 
INDEPENDENCE. 



1776. 

THE DECLARATION OF 
INDEPENDENCE. 


One Hundred Years Ago our Fathers retired the Gods 
from Politics. 

T HE Declaration of Independence is the grand¬ 
est, the bravest, and the profoundest political 
document that was ever signed by the representa¬ 
tives of a people. It is the embodiment of physical 
and moral courage and of political wisdom. 

I say of physical courage, because it was a 
declaration of war against the most powerful nation 
then on the globe; a declaration of war by thirteen 
weak, unorganized colonies; a declaration of war 
by a few people, without military stores, without 
wealth, without strength, against the most powerful 
kingdom on the earth; a declaration of war made 
when the British navy, at that day the mistress of 


IO 



146 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 


every sea, was hovering along the coast of 
America, looking after defenseless towns and 
villages to ravage and destroy. It was made when 
thousands of English soldiers were upon our soil, 
and when the principal cities of America were in 
the susbtantial possession of the enemy. And so, 
I say, all things considered, it was the bravest 
political document ever signed by man. And if 
it was physically brave, the moral courage of the 
document is almost infinitely beyond the physical. 
They had the courage not only, but they had the 
almost infinite wisdom, to declare that all men are 
created equal. 

Such things had occasionally been said by some 
political enthusiast in the olden time, but for the 
first time in the history of the world, the represen¬ 
tatives of a nation, the representatives of a real, 
living, breathing, hoping people, declared that all 
men are created equal. With one blow, with one 
stroke of the pen, they struck down all the cruel, 
heartless barriers that aristocracy, that priestcraft, 
that kingcraft had raised between man and man. 
They struck down with one immortal blow, that 
infamous spirit of caste that makes a god almost 
a beast, and a beast almost a god. With one 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 147 


word, with one blow, they wiped away and utterly 
destroyed all that had been done by centuries of 
war—centuries of hypocrisy—centuries of injustice. 

What more did they do? They then declared 
that each man has a right to live. And what does 
that mean? It means that he has the right to 
make his living. It means that he has the right 
to breathe the air, to work the land, that he stands 
the equal of every other human being beneath the 
shining stars; entitled to the product of his labor 
— the labor of his hand and of his brain. 

What more? That every man has the right 
to pursue his own happiness in his own way. 
Grander words than these have never been spoken 
by man. 

And what more did these men say? They laid 
down the doctrine that governments were insti¬ 
tuted among men for the purpose of preserving 
the rights of the people. The old idea was that 
people existed solely for the benefit of the state — 
that is to say, for kings and nobles. 

The old idea was that the people were the 
wards of king and priest—that their bodies be¬ 
longed to one and their souls to the other. 

And what more? That the people are the 



148 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, 


source of political power. That was not only a 
revelation, but it was a revolution. It changed 
the ideas of people with regard to the source of 
political power. For the first time it made human 
beings men. What was the old idea? The old 
idea was that no political power came from, nor in 
any manner belonged to, the people. The old 
idea was that the political power came from the 
clouds; that the political power came in some 
miraculous way from heaven; that it came down to 
kings, and queens, and robbers. That was the old 
idea. The nobles lived upon the labor of the 
people; the people had no rights; the nobles stole 
what they had and divided with the kings, and the 
kings pretended to divide what they stole with God 
Almighty. The source, then, of political power 
was from above. The people were responsible to 
the nobles, the nobles, to the king, and the people 
had no political rights whatever, no more than the 
wild beasts of the forest. The kings were respon¬ 
sible to God; not to the people. The kings were 
responsible to the clouds; not to the toiling millions 
they robbed and plundered. 

And our forefathers, in this declaration of 
independence, reversed this thing, and said: No; 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 149 


the people, they are the source of political power, 
and their rulers, these presidents, these kings, are 
but the agents and servants of the great, sublime 
people. For the first time, really, in the history 
of the world, the king was made to get off the 
throne and the people were royally seated thereon. 
The people became the sovereigns, and the old 
sovereigns became the servants and the agents of 
the people. It is hard for you and me now to 
imagine even the immense results of that change. 
It is hard for you and for me, at this day, to 
understand how thoroughly it had been ingrained 
in the brain of almost every man, that the king 
had some wonderful right over him; that in some 
strange way the king owned him; that in some 
miraculous manner he belonged, body and soul, to 
somebody who rode on a horse—to somebody with 
epaulettes on his shoulders and a tinsel crown upon 
his brainless head. 

Our forefathers had been educated in that idea, 
and when they first landed on American shores 
they believed it. They thought they belonged to 
somebody, and that they must be loyal to some 
thief, who could trace his pedigree back to an¬ 
tiquity’s most successful robber. 



150 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 


It took a long time for them to get that idea 
out of their heads and hearts. They were three 
thousand miles away from the despotisms of the old 
world, and every wave of the sea was an assistant 
to them. The distance helped to disenchant their 
minds of that infamous belief, and every mile 
between them and the pomp and glory of monarchy 
helped to put republican ideas and thoughts into 
their minds. Besides that, when they came to 
this country, when the savage was in the forest 
and three thousand miles of waves on the other 
side, menaced by barbarians on the one side and 
famine on the other, they learned that a man who 
had courage, a man who had thought, was as good 
as any other man in the world, and they built up, 
as it were, in spite of themselves, little republics. 
And the man that had the most nerve and heart 
was the best man, whether he had any noble blood 
in his veins or not. 

It has been a favorite idea with me that our 
forefathers were educated by Nature; that they 
grew grand as the continent upon which they 
landed; that the great rivers — the wide plains— 
the splendid lakes — the lonely forests — the sub¬ 
lime mountains — that all these things stole into 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 151 


and became a part of their being, and they grew 
great as the country in which they lived. They 
began to hate the narrow, contracted views of 
Europe. They were educated by their surround¬ 
ings, and every little colony had to be, to a certain 
extent, a republic. The kings of the old world 
endeavored to parcel out this land to their favorites. 
But there were too many Indians. There was too 
much courage required for them to take and keep 
it, and so men had to come here who were dissat¬ 
isfied with the old country — who were dissatisfied 
with England, dissatisfied with France, with Ger¬ 
many, with Ireland and Holland. The kings' 
favorites stayed at home. Men came here for 
liberty, and on account of certain principles they 
entertained and held dearer than life. And they 
were willing to work, willing to fell the forests, 
to fight the savages, willing to go through all the 
hardships, perils and dangers of a new country, of 
a new land; and the consequence was that our 
country was settled by brave and adventurous 
spirits, by men who had opinions of their own and 
were willing to live in the wild forests for the sake 
of expressing those opinions, even if they expressed 
them only to trees, rocks, and savage men. The 
best blood of the old world came to the new. 



152 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 


When they first came over they did not have a 
great deal of political philosophy, nor the best 
ideas of liberty. We might as well tell the truth. 
When the Puritains first came, they were narrow. 
They did not understand what liberty meant—what 
religious liberty, what political liberty, was; but 
they found out in a few years. There was one 
feeling among them that rises to their eternal honor 
like a white shaft to the clouds — they were in 
favor of universal education. Wherever they went 
they built school houses, introduced books, and 
ideas of literature. They believed that every man 
should know how to read and how to write, and 
should find out all that his capacity allowed him to 
comprehend. That is the glory of the Puritan 
fathers. 

They forgot in a little while what they had 
suffered, and they forgot to apply the principle of 
universal liberty — of toleration. Some of the 
colonies did not forget it, and I want to give credit 
where credit should be given. The Catholics of 
Maryland were the first people on the new conti¬ 
nent to declare universal religious toleration. Let 
this be remembered to their eternal honor. Let it 
be remembered to the disgrace of the Protestant 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 153 


government of England, that it caused this grand 
law to be repealed. And to the honor and credit 
of the Catholics of Maryland let it be remembered, 
that the moment they got back into power they 
re-enacted the old law. The Baptists of Rhode 
Island also, led by Roger Williams, were in favor 
of universal religious liberty. 

No American should fail to honor Roger 
Williams. He was the first grand advocate of the 
liberty of the soul. He was in favor of the eternal 
divorce of church and state. So far as I know, he 
was the only man at that time in this country who 
was in favor of real religious liberty. While the 
Catholics of Maryland declared in favor of religious 
toleration , they had no idea of religious liberty. 
They would not allow any one to call in question 
the doctrine of the trinity, or the inspiration of the 
scriptures. They stood ready with branding iron 
and gallows to burn and choke out of man the idea 
that he had a right to think and to express his 
thoughts. 

So many religions met in our country—so 
many theories and dogmas came in contact — 
so many follies, mistakes and stupidities became 
acquainted with each other, that religion began to 



154 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 


fall somewhat into disrepute. Besides this, the 
question of a new nation began to take precedence 
of all others. 

The people were too much interested in this 
world to quarrel about the next. The preacher 
was lost in the patriot. The bible was read to find 
passages against kings. 

Everybody was discussing the rights of man. 
Farmers and mechanics suddenly became states¬ 
men, and in every shop and cabin nearly every 
question was asked and answered. 

During these years of political excitement, the 
interest in religion abated to that degree that a 
common purpose animated men of all sects and 
creeds. 

At last our fathers became tired of being 
colonists — tired of writing and reading and sign¬ 
ing petitions, and presenting them on their bended 
knees to an idiot king. They began to have an 
aspiration to form a new nation, to be citizens of a 
new republic instead of subjects of an old mon¬ 
archy. They had the idea — the Puritans, the 
Catholics, the Episcopalians, the Baptists, the 
Quakers, and a few Free Thinkers, all had the idea 
— that they would like to form a new nation. 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 155 


Now, do not understand that all of our fathers 
were in favor of independence. Do not understand 
that they were all like Jefferson; that they were all 
like Adams or Lee; that they were all like 
Thomas Paine or John Hancock. There were 
thousands and thousands of them who were op¬ 
posed to American independence. There were 
thousands and thousands who said: “When you 
say men are created equal, it is a lie; when you 
say the political power resides in the great body of 
the people, it is false.” Thousands and thousands 
of them said: “We prefer Great Britain.” But 
the men who were in favor of independence, the 
men who knew that a new nation must be born, 
went on full of hope and courage, and nothing 
could daunt or stop or stay the heroic, fearless few. 

They met in Philadelphia; and the resolution 
was moved by Lee of Virginia, that the colonies 
ought to be independent states, and ought to dis¬ 
solve their political connection with Great Britain. 

They made up their minds that a new nation 
must be formed. All nations had been, so to 
speak, the wards of some church. The religious 
idea as to the source of power had been at the 
foundation of all governments, and had been the 
bane and curse of man. 



15G DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 


Happily for us, there was no church strong 
enough to dictate to the rest. Fortunately for us, 
the colonists not only, but the colonies differed 
widely in their religious views. There were the 
Puritans who hated the Episcopalians, and Episco¬ 
palians who hated the Catholics, and the Catholics 
who hated both, while the Quakers held them all 
in contempt. There they were, of every sort, and 
color, and kind, and how was it that they came 
together? They had a common aspiration. They 
wanted to form a new nation. More than that, 
most of them cordially hated Great Britain; and 
they pledged each other to forget these religious 
prejudices, for a time at least, and agreed that 
there should be only one religion until they got 
through, and that was the religion of patriotism. 
They solemnly agreed that the new nation should 
not belong to any particular church, but that it 
should secure the rights of all. 

Our fathers founded the first secular govern¬ 
ment that was ever founded in this world. Rec- 
collect that. The first secular goverment; the 
first government that said every church has exactly 
the same rights, and no more; every religion has 
the same rights, and no more. In other words, our 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 157 


fathers were the first men who had the sense, had 
the genius, to know that no church should be 
allowed to have a sword; that it should be allowed 
only to exert its moral influence. 

You might as well have a government united 
by force with Art, or with Poetry, or with Oratory, 
as with Religion. Religion should have the influ¬ 
ence upon mankind that its goodness, that its 
morality, its justice, its charity, its reason, and its 
argument give it, and no more. Religion should 
have the effect upon mankind that it necessarily 
has, and no more. The religion that has to be 
supported by law is without value, not only, but a 
fraud and curse. The religious argument that has 
to be supported by a musket, is hardly worth 
making. A prayer that must have a cannon 
behind it, better never be uttered. Forgiveness 
ought not to go in partnership with shot and shell. 
Love need not carry knives and revolvers. 

So, our fathers said: “We will form a secular 
government, and under the flag with which we are 
going to enrich the air, we will allow every man to 
worship God as he thinks best.” They said: 
“ Religion is an individual thing between each man 
and his Creator, and he can worship as he pleases 



158 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 


and as he desires.” And why did they do this? 
The history of the world warned them that the 
liberty of man was not safe in the clutch and grasp 
of any church. They had read of and seen the 
thumb-screws, the racks and the dungeons of the 
inquisition. They knew all about the hypocrisy of 
the olden time. They knew that the church had 
stood side by side with the throne; that the high 
priests were hypocrites, and that the kings were 
robbers. They also knew that if they gave to any 
church power, it would corrupt the best church in 
the world. And so they said that power must not 
reside in a church nor in a sect, but power must be 
wherever humanity is, — in the great body of the 
people. And the officers and servants of the peo¬ 
ple must be responsible to them. And so I say 
again, as I said in the commencement, this is the 
wisest, the profoundest, the bravest political docu¬ 
ment that ever was written and signed by man. 

They turned, as I tell you, everything squarely 
about. They derived all their authority from the 
people. They did away forever with the theologi¬ 
cal idea of government. 

And what more did they say ? They said that 
whenever the rulers abused this authority, this 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 159 


power, incapable of destruction, returned to the 
people. How did they come to say this? I 
will tell you. They were pushed into it. How? 
They felt that they were oppressed; and whenever 
a man feels that he is the subject of injustice, his 
perception of right and wrong is wonderfully 
quickened. 

Nobody was ever in prison wrongfully who did 
not believe in the writ of habeas corpiis. Nobody 
ever suffered wrongfully without instantly having 
ideas of justice. 

And they began to inquire what rights the king 
of Great Britain had. They began to search for 
the charter of his authority. They began to inves¬ 
tigate and dig down to the bed-rock upon which 
society must be founded, and when they got down 
there, forced there, too, by their oppressors, forced 
against their own prejudices and education, they 
found at the bottom of things, not lords, not nobles, 
not pulpits, not thrones, but humanity and the 
rights of men. 

And so they said, we are men; we are men . 
They found out they were men. And the next 
thing they said, was, “We will be free men; we are 
weary of being colonists; we are tired of being 



160 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 


subjects ; we are men; and these colonies ought to 
be states; and these states ought to be a nation; 
and that nation ought to drive the last British 
soldier into the sea.” And so they signed that 
brave declaration of independence. 

I thank every one of them from the bottom of 
my heart for signing that sublime declaration. I 
thank them for their courage — for their patriotism 
— for their wisdom — for the splendid confidence 
in themselves and in the human race. I thank 
them for what they were, and for what we are — 
for what they did and for what we have received — 
for what they suffered, and for what we enjoy. 

What would we have been if we had remained 
colonists and subjects ? What would we have 
been to-day? Nobodies,— ready to get down on 
our knees and crawl in the very dust at the sight 
of somebody that was supposed to have in him 
some drop of blood that flowed in the veins of that 
mailed marauder — that royal robber, William the 
Conqueror. 

They signed that declaration of independence, 
although they knew that it would produce a long, 
terrible, and bloody war. They looked forward 
and saw poverty, deprivation, gloom and death. 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 161 


But they also saw, on the wrecked clouds of war, 
the beautiful bow of freedom. 

These grand men were enthusiasts; and the 
world has only been raised by enthusiasts. In 
every country there have been a few who have 
given a national aspiration to the people. The 
enthusiasts of 1776 were the builders and framers 
of this great and splendid government; and they 
were the men who saw, although others did not,, 
the golden fringe of the mantle of glory that will 
finally cover this world. They knew, they felt,, 
they believed that they would give a new constel¬ 
lation to the political heavens — that they would 
make the Americans a grand people — grand as 
the continent upon which they lived. 

The war commenced. There was little money, 
and less credit. The new nation had but few 
friends. To a great extent, each soldier of free¬ 
dom had to clothe and feed himself. He was poor 
and pure — brave and good, and so he went to the 
fields of death to fight for the rights of man. 

What did the soldier leave when he went? 

He left his wife and children. 

Did he leave them in a beautiful home, sur- 



162 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 


rounded by civilization, in the repose of law, in the 
security of a great and powerful republic? 

No. He left his wife and children on the edge, 
on the fringe of the boundless forest, in which 
crouched and crept the red savage, who was at 
that time the ally of the still more savage Briton. 
He left his wife to defend herself, and he left the 
prattling babes to be defended by their mother 
and by nature. The mother made the living; she 
planted the corn and the potatoes, and hoed them 
in the sun, raised the children, and in the darkness 
of night, told them about their brave father, and 
the “sacred cause.” She told them that in a little 
while the war would be over and father would come 
back covered with honor and glory. 

Think of the women, of the sweet children who 
listened for the footsteps of the dead — who waited 
through the sad and desolate years for the dear 
ones who never came. 

The soldiers of 1776 did not march away with 
music and banners. They went in silence, looked 
at and gazed after by eyes filled with tears. They 
went to meet, not an equal, but a superior — to 
fight five times their number—to make a desperate 
stand — to stop the advance of the enemy, and 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 103 


then, when their ammunition gave out, seek the 
protection of rocks, of rivers and of hills. 

Let me say here: The greatest test of courage 
on the earth is to bear defeat without losing heart. 
That army is the bravest that can be whipped the 
greatest number of times and fight again. 

Over the entire territory, so to speak, then 
settled by our forefathers, they were driven again 
and again. Now and then they would meet the 
English with something like equal numbers, and 
then the eagle of victory would proudly perch 
upon the stripes and stars. And so they went 
on as best they could, hoping and fighting until 
they came to the dark and sombre gloom of Valley 
Forge. 

There were very few hearts then beneath that 
flag that did not begin to think that the struggle 
was useless; that all the blood and treasure had 
been spent and shed in vain. But there were some 
men gifted with that wonderful prophecy that 
fulfils itself, and with that wonderful magnetic 
power that makes heroes of everybody they come 
in contact with. 

And so our fathers went through the gloom of 
that terrible time, and still fought on. Brave men 



164 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 


wrote grand words, cheering the despondent, brave 
men did brave deeds, the rich man gave his wealth, 
the poor man gave his life, until at last, by the 
victory of Yorktown, the old banner won its place 
in the air, and became glorious forever. 

Seven long years of war — fighting for what? 
For the principle that all men are created equal — 
a truth that nobody ever disputed except a scoun¬ 
drel ; nobody, nobody in the entire history of this 
world. No man ever denied that truth who was 
not a rascal, and at heart a thief; never, never, and 
never will. What else were they fighting for? 
Simply that in America every man should have a 
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 
Nobody ever denied that except a villain; never, 
never. It has been denied by kings — they were 
thieves. It has been denied by statesmen — they 
were liars. It has been denied by priests, by 
clergymen, by cardinals, by bishops and by popes 
— they were hypocrites. 

What else were they • fighting for? For the 
idea that all political power is vested in the great 
body of the people. The great body of the people 
make all the money; do all the work. They plow 
the land, cut down the forests; they produce 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 165 


everything that is produced. Then who shall say 
what shall be done with what is produced except 
the producer? Is it the non-producing thief, sitting 
on a throne, surrounded by vermin? 

Those were the things they were fighting for; 
and that is all they were fighting for. They fought 
to build up a new, a great nation; to establish an 
asylum for the oppressed of the world everywhere. 
They knew the history of this world. They knew 
the history of human slavery. 

The history of civilization is the history of the 
slow and painful enfranchisement of the human 
race. In the olden times the family was a mon¬ 
archy, the father being the monarch. The mother 
and children were the veriest slaves. The will of 
the father was the supreme law. He had the 
power of life and death. It took thousands of 
years to civilize this father, thousands of years to 
make the condition of wife and mother and child 
even tolerable. A few families constituted a tribe ; 
the tribe had a chief; the chief was a tyrant; 
a few tribes formed a nation; the nation was 
governed by a king, who was also a tyrant. A 
strong nation robbed, plundered, and took captive 
the weaker ones. This was the commencement of 
human slavery. 



166 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 


It is not possible for the human imagination to 
conceive of the horrors of slavery. It has left no 
possible crime uncommitted, no possible cruelty 
unperpetrated. It has been practised and defended 
by all nations in some form. It has been upheld 
by all religions. It has been defended by nearly 
every pulpit. From the profits derived from the 
slave trade churches have been built, cathedrals 
reared and priests paid. Slavery has been blessed 
by bishop, by cardinal, and by pope. It has 
received the sanction of statesmen, of kings, and 
of queens. It has been defended by the throne, 
the pulpit, and the bench. Monarchs have shared 
in the profits. Clergymen have taken their part of 
the spoil, reciting passages of scripture in its 
defense at the same time, and judges have taken 
their portion in the name of equity and law. 

Only a few years ago our ancestors were slaves. 
Only a few years ago they passed with and belong¬ 
ed to the soil, like coal under it and rocks on it. 
Only a few years ago they were treated like beasts 
of burden, worse far than we treat our animals at 
the present day. Only a few years ago it was a 
crime in England for a man to have a bible in his 
house, a crime for which men were hanged, and 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 167 


their bodies afterwards burned. Only a few years 
ago fathers could and did sell their children. Only 
a few years ago our ancestors were not allowed to 
speak or write their thoughts — that being a crime. 
Only a few years ago to be honest, at least in the 
expression of your ideas, was a felony. To do 
right was a capital offense; and in those days 
chains and whips were the incentives to labor, 
and the preventives of thought. Honesty was a 
vagrant, justice a fugitive, and liberty in chains. 
Only a few years ago men were denounced because 
they doubted the inspiration of the bible — because 
they denied miracles and laughed at the wonders 
recounted by the ancient Jews. 

Only a few years ago a man had to believe in 
the total depravity of the human heart in order to 
be respectable. Only a few years ago, people who 
thought God too good to punish in eternal flames 
an unbaptized child were considered infamous. 

As soon as our ancestors began to get free 
they began to enslave others. With an inconsis¬ 
tency that defies explanation, they practiced upon 
others the same outrages that had been perpe¬ 
trated upon them. As soon as white slavery 
began to be abolished, black slavery commenced. 



168 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 


In this infamous traffic nearly every nation of 
Europe embarked. Fortunes were quickly real¬ 
ized; the avarice and cupidity of Europe were 
excited; all ideas of justice were discarded; pity 
fled from the human breast; a few good, brave 
men recited the horrors of the trade; avarice was 
deaf; religion refused to hear; the trade went on; 
the governments of Europe upheld it in the name 
of commerce — in the name of civilization and 
of religion. 

Our fathers knew the history of caste. They 
knew that in the despotisms of the old world it was 
a disgrace to be useful. They knew that a me¬ 
chanic was esteemed as hardly the equal of a 
hound, and far below a blooded horse. They 
knew that a nobleman held a son of labor in con¬ 
tempt— that he had no rights the royal loafers 
were bound to respect. 

The world has changed. 

The other day there came shoemakers, potters, 
workers in wood and iron from Europe, and they 
were received in the city of New York as though 
they had been princes. They had been sent by 
the great republic of France to examine into the 
arts and manufactures of the great republic of 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 169 


America. They looked a thousand times better 
to me than the Edward Alberts and Albert Ed¬ 
wards— the royal vermin, that live on the body 
politic. And I would think much more of our 
government if it would fete and feast them, 
instead of wining and dining the imbeciles of a 
royal line. 

Our fathers devoted their lives and fortunes to 
the grand work of founding a government for the 
protection of the rights of man. The theological 
idea as to the source of political power had 
poisoned the web and woof of every government 
in the world, and our fathers banished it from this 
continent forever. 

What we want to-day is what our fathers wrote 
down. They did not attain to their ideal; we 
approach it nearer, but have not reached it yet. 
We want, not only the independence of a state, 
not only the independence of a nation, but some¬ 
thing far more glorious—the absolute independence 
of the individual. That is what we want. I want 
it so that I, one of the children of Nature, can 
stand on an equality with the rest; that I can say 
this is My air, my sunshine, My earth, and I have 
a right to live, and hope, and aspire, and labor, 



170 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 


and enjoy the fruit of that labor, as much as any 
individual or any nation on the face of the globe. 

We want every American to make to-day, on 
this hundredth anniversary, a declaration of indi¬ 
vidual independence. Let each man enjoy his 
liberty to the utmost — enjoy all he can; but be 
sure it is not at the expense of another. The 
French convention gave the best definition of 
liberty I have ever read: “The liberty of one 
citizen ceases only where the liberty of another 
citizen commences.” I know of no better defini¬ 
tion. I ask you to-day to make a declaration of 
individual independence. And if you are indepen¬ 
dent, be just. Allow everybody else to make his 
declaration of individual independence. Allow 
your wife, allow your husband, allow your children 
to make theirs. Let everybody be absolutely 
free and independent, knowing only the sacred 
obligation of honesty and affection. Let us be 
independent of party, independent of everybody 
and everything except our own consciences and our 
own brains. Do not belong to any clique. Have 
the clear title deeds in fee simple to yourselves, 
without any mortgage on the premises to any¬ 
body in the world. 



DECLARA TION OF INDEPENDENCE. 171 


( It is a grand thing to be the owner of yourself. 
It is a grand thing to protect the rights of others. 
It is a sublime thing to be free and just\) 

Only a few days ago I stood in Independence 
Hall — in that little room where was signed the 
immortal paper. A little room, like any other; 
and it did not seem possible that from that room 
went forth ideas, like cherubim and seraphim, 
spreading their wings over a continent, and touch¬ 
ing, as with holy fire, the hearts of men. 

In a few moments I was in the park, where are 
gathered the accomplishments of a century. Our 
fathers never dreamed of the things I saw. There 
were hundreds of locomotives, with their nerves of 
steel and breath of flame — every kind of machine, 
with whirling wheels and curious cogs and cranks, 
and the myriad thoughts of men that have been 
wrought in iron, brass and steel. And going out 
from one little building were wires in the air, 
stretching to every civilized nation, and they could 
send a shining messenger in a moment to any part 
of the world, and it would go sweeping under the 
waves of the sea with thoughts and words within its 
glowing heart. I saw all that had been achieved 
by this nation, and I wished that the signers of the 



172 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 


Declaration — the soldiers of the revolution — could 
see what a century of freedom has produced. I 
wished they could see the fields we cultivate —the 
rivers we navigate — the railroads running over the 
Alleghanies, far into what was then the unknown 
forest — on over the broad prairies — on over the 
vast plains — away over the mountains of the 
West, to the Golden Gate of the Pacific. 

All this is the result of a hundred years of 
freedom. 

Are you not more than glad that in 1776 was 
announced the sublime principle that political 
power resides with the people? That our fathers 
then made up their minds nevermore to be colo¬ 
nists and subjects, but that they would be free and 
independent citizens of America? 

I will not name any of the grand men who 
fought for liberty. All should be named, or none. 
I feel that the unknown soldier who was shot 
down without even his name being remembered — 
who was included only in a report of “a hundred 
killed,” or “a hundred missing,” nobody knowing 
even the number that attached to his august corpse 
— is entitled to as deep and heartfelt thanks as the 
titled leader who fell at the head of the host. 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 


173 


Standing here amid the sacred memories of the 
first, on the golden threshold of the second, I ask, 
Will the second century be as grand as the first? I 
believe it will, because we are growing more and 
more humane, I believe there is more human 
kindness, more real, sweet human sympathy, a 
greater desire to help one another, in the United 
States, than in all the world besides. 

We must progress. We are just at the com¬ 
mencement of invention. The steam engine —the 
telegraph — these are but the toys with which 
science has been amused. Wait; there will be 
grander things; there will be wider and higher 
culture — a grander standard of character, of liter¬ 
ature, and art. 

We have now half as many millions of people 
as we have years, and many of us will live until a 
hundred million stand beneath the flag. We are 
getting more real solid sense. The school house 
is the finest building in the village. We are 
writing and reading more books; we are painting 
and buying more pictures; we are struggling more 
and more to get at the philosophy of life, of things 
— trying more and more to answer the questions 
of the eternal Sphinx. We are looking in every 



174 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 


direction—investigating; in short, we are thinking 
and working. Besides all this, I believe the people 
are nearer honest than ever before. A few years 
ago we were willing to live upon the labor of four 
million slaves. Was that honest? At last, we 
have a national conscience. At last, we have 
carried out the Declaration of Independence. Our 
fathers wrote it—we have accomplished it. The 
black man was a slave—we made him a citizen. 
We found four million human beings in manacles, 
and now the hands of a race are held up in the 
free air without a chain. 

I have had the supreme pleasure of seeing a 
man — once a slave — sitting in the seat of his 
former master in the Congress of the United States. 
I have had that pleasure, and when I saw it my 
eyes were filled with tears. I felt that we had 
carried out the Declaration of Independence,— that 
we had given reality to it, and breathed the breath 
of life into its every word. I felt that our flag 
would float over and protect the colored man and 
his little children—standing straight in the sun, 
just the same as though he were white and worth a 
million. I would protect him more, because the 
rich white man could protect himself. 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 175 


All who stand beneath our banner are free. 
Ours is the only flag that has in reality written 
upon it: Liberty, Fraternity, Equality—the three 
grandest words in all the languages of men. 

Liberty: Give to every man the fruit of his 
own labor—the labor of his hands and of his 
brain. 

Fraternity: Every man in the right is my 

brother. 

Equality: The rights of all are equal: Justice, 
poised and balanced in eternal calm, will shake 
from the golden scales, in which are weighed the 
acts of men, the very dust of prejudice and caste: 
No race, no color, no previous condition, can 
change the rights of men. 

The Declaration of Independence has at last 
been carried out in letter and in spirit. 

The second century will be grander than the 
first. 

Fifty millions of people are celebrating this 
day. To-day, the black man looks upon his child 
and says: The avenues to distinction are open to 

you_upon your brow may fall the civic wreath — 

this day belongs to you. 



176 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 


We are celebrating the courage and wisdom of 
our fathers, and the glad shout of a free people, the 
anthem of a grand nation, commencing at the 
Atlantic, is following the sun to the Pacific, across 
a continent of happy homes. 

We are a great people. Three millions have 
increased to fifty — thirteen states to thirty-eight. 
We have better homes, better clothes, better food 
and more of it, and more of the conveniences of 
life, than any other people upon the globe. 

The farmers of our country live better than did 
the kings and princes two hundred years ago—and 
they have twice as much sense and heart. Liberty 
and labor have given us all. I want every person 
here to believe in the dignity of labor—to know 
that the respectable man is the useful man — the 
man who produces or helps others to produce 
something of value, whether thought of the brain 
or work of the hand. 

I want you to go away with an eternal hatred in 
your breast of injustice, of aristocracy, of caste, of 
the idea that one man has more rights than another 
because he has better clothes, more land, more 
money, because he owns a railroad, or is famous 
and in high position. Remember that all men have 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 177 


equal rights. Remember that the man who acts 
best his part — who loves his friends the best — is 
most willing to help others — truest to the dis¬ 
charge of obligation — who has the best heart — 
the most feeling — the deepest sympathies — and 
who freely gives to others the rights that he 
claims for himself, is the best man. I am willing to- 
swear to this. 

What has made this country? I say again,, 
liberty and labor. What would we be without 
labor? I want every farmer, when plowing the 
rustling corn of June — while mowing in the per¬ 
fumed fields — to feel that he is adding to the 
wealth and glory of the United States. I want 
every mechanic — every man of toil, to know and 
feel that he is keeping the cars running, the tele¬ 
graph wires in the air; that he is making the 
statues and painting the pictures: that he is 
writing and printing the books; that he is helping 
to fill the world with honor, with happiness, with 
love and law. 

Our country is founded upon the dignity of 
labor — upon the equality of man. Ours is the 
first real republic in the history of the world. 
Beneath our flag the people are free. We have 



178 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 


retired the gods from politics. We have found 
that man is the only source of political power, 
and that the governed should govern. We have 
disfranchised the aristocrats of the air and have 
given one country to mankind. 



ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 






ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


To Plow is to Pray—to Plant is to Prophecy, and 
the Harvest Answers and Fulfills. 

Y AM not an old and experienced farmer, nor a 
•Y tiller of the soil, nor one of the hard-handed 
sons of labor. I imagine, however, that I know 
something about cultivating the soil, and getting 
happiness out of the ground. 

I know enough to know that agriculture is the 
basis of all wealth, prosperity and luxury. I know 
that in a country where the tillers of the fields are 
free, everybody is free and ought to be prosperous. 
Happy is that country where those who cultivate 
the land own it. Patriotism is born in the woods 
and fields — by lakes and streams — by crags and 
plains. 

The old way of farming was a great mistake. 
Everything was done the wrong way. It was all 
work and waste, weariness and want. They used 



182 


ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


to fence a hundred and sixty acres of land with a 
couple of dogs. Everything was left to the pro¬ 
tection of the blessed trinity of chance, accident 
and mistake. 

When I was a farmer they used to haul wheat 
two hundred miles in wagons and sell it for thirty- 
five cents a bushel. They would bring home 
about three hundred feet of lumber, two bunches 
of shingles, a barrel of salt, and a cook-stove that 
never would draw and never did bake. 

In those blessed days the people lived on corn 
and bacon. Cooking was an unknown art. Eating 
was a necessity, not a pleasure. It was hard work 
for the cook to keep on good terms even with 
hunger. 

We had poor houses. The rain held the roofs 
in perfect contempt, and the snow drifted joyfully 
on the floors and beds. They had no barns. 
The horses were kept in rail pens surrounded with 
straw. Long before spring the sides would be 
eaten away and nothing but roofs would be left. 
Food is fuel. When the cattle were exposed to 
all the blasts of winter, it took all the corn and 
oats that could be stuffed into them to prevent 
actual starvation. 



ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


183 


In those times most farmers thought the best 
place for the pig-pen was immediately in front of 
the house. There is nothing like sociability. 

Women were supposed to know the art of 
making fires without fuel. The wood pile con¬ 
sisted, as a general thing, of one log upon which 
an axe or two had been worn out in vain. There 
was nothing to kindle a fire with. Pickets were 
pulled from the garden fence, clap-boards taken 
from the house, and every stray plank was seized 
upon for kindling. Everything was done in the 
hardest way. Everything about the farm was 
disagreeable. Nothing was kept in order. Noth¬ 
ing was preserved. The wagons stood in the sun 
and rain, and the plows rusted in the fields. There 
was no leisure, no feeling that the work was done. 
It was all labor and weariness and vexation of 
spirit. The crops were destroyed by wandering 
herds, or they were put in too late, or too early, or 
they were blown down, or caught by the frost, or 
devoured by bugs, or stung by flies, or eaten by 
worms, or carried away by birds, or dug up by 
gophers, or washed away by floods, or dried up 
by the sun, or rotted in the stack, or heated in the 
crib, or they all run to vines, or tops, or straw, or 



184 


ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


smut, or cobs. And when in spite of all these 
accidents that lie in wait between the plow and 
the reaper, they did succeed in raising a good 
crop and a high price was offered, then the roads 
would be impassable. And when the roads got 
good, then the prices went down. Everything 
worked together for evil. 

Nearly every farmer’s boy took an oath that he 
never would cultivate the soil. The moment they 
arrived at the age of twenty-one they left the 
desolate and dreary farms and rushed to the 
towns and cities. They wanted to be book¬ 
keepers, doctors, merchants, railroad men, insur¬ 
ance agents, lawyers, even preachers, anything to 
avoid the drudgery of the farm. Nearly every boy 
acquainted with the three R’s — reading, writing, 
and arithmetic — imagined that he had altogether 
more education than ought to be wasted in raising 
potatoes and corn. They made haste to get into 
some other business. Those who stayed upon the 
farm envied those who went away. 

A few years ago the times were prosperous, 
and the young men went to the cities to enjoy the 
fortunes that were waiting for them. They wanted 
to engage in something that promised quick 



ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS . 


185 


returns. They built railways, established banks 
and insurance companies. They speculated in 
stocks in Wall Street, and gambled in grain at 
Chicago. They became rich. They lived in 
palaces. They rode in carriages. They pitied 
their poor brothers on the farms, and the poor 
brothers envied them. 

But time has brought its revenge. The farmers 
have seen the railroad president a bankrupt, and 
the road in the hands of a receiver. They have 
seen the bank president abscond, and the insurance 
company a wrecked and ruined fraud. The only 
solvent people, as a class, the only independent 
people, are the tillers of the soil. 

Farming must be made more attractive. The 
comforts of the town must be added to the beauty 
of the fields. The sociability of the city must be 
rendered possible in the country. 

Farming has been made repulsive. The farm¬ 
ers have been unsociable and their homes have 
been lonely. They have been wasteful and care¬ 
less. They have not been proud of their business. 

In the first place, farming ought to be reason¬ 
ably profitable. The farmers have not attended to 
their own interests. They have been robbed and 
plundered in a hundred ways. 



18G 


ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


No farmer can afford to raise corn and oats and 
hay to sell. He should sell horses, not oats; sheep, 
cattle and pork, not corn. He should make every 
profit possible out of what he produces. So long 
as the farmers of Illinois ship their corn and oats, 
so long they will be poor,—just so long will their 
farms be mortgaged to the insurance companies 
and banks of the east,—just so long will they do 
the work and others reap the benefit,-—just so long 
will they be poor, and the money lenders grow 
rich,—just so long will cunning avarice grasp and 
hold the net profits of honest toil. When the 
farmers of the west ship beef and pork instead of 
grain,— when we manufacture here,— when we 
cease paying tribute to others, ours will be the 
most prosperous country in the world. 

Another thing—It is just as cheap to raise a 
good as a poor breed of cattle. Scrubs will eat 
just as much as thoroughbreds. If you are not 
able to buy Durhams and Alderneys, you can 
raise the corn breed. By “corn breed” I mean 
the cattle that have, for several generations, had 
enough to eat, and have been treated with 
kindness. Every farmer who will treat his cattle 
kindly, and feed them all they want, will, in a 



ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


187 


few years, have blooded stock on his farm. All 
blooded stock has been produced in this way. You 
can raise good cattle just as you can raise good 
people. If you wish to raise a good boy you must 
give him plenty to eat, and treat him with kindness. 
In this way, and in this way only, can good cattle 
or good people be produced. 

Another thing — You must beautify your homes. 

When I was a farmer it was not fashionable to 
set out trees, nor to plant vines. 

When you visited the farm you were not wel¬ 
comed by flowers, and greeted by trees loaded 
with fruit. Yellow dogs came bounding over the 
tumbled fence like wild beasts. There is no sense 
—there is no profit in such a life. It is not living. 
The farmers ought to beautify their homes. There 
should be trees and grass and flowers and running 
vines. Everything should be kept in order—gates 
should be on their hinges, and about all there 
should be the pleasant air of thrift. In every 
house there should be a bath-room. The bath is a 
civilizer, a refiner, a beautifier. When you come 
from the fields tired, covered with dust, nothing is 
so refreshing. Above all things, keep clean. It is 
not necessary to be a pig in order to raise one. In 



188 


ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


the cool of the evening, after a day in the field, put 
on clean clothes, take a seat under the trees, ’mid 
the perfume of flowers, surrounded by your family, 
and you will know what it is to enjoy life like a 
gentleman. 

In no part of the globe will farming pay better 
than in Illinois. You are in the best portion of the 
earth. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, there is 
no such country as yours. The east is hard and 
stony; the soil is stingy. The far west is a desert 
parched and barren, dreary and desolate as perdi¬ 
tion would be with the fires out. It is better to 
dig wheat and corn from the soil than gold. Only 
a few days ago I was where they wrench the 
precious metals from the miserly clutch of the 
rocks. When I saw the mountains, treeless, shrub¬ 
less, flowerless, without even a spire of grass, it 
seemed to me that gold had the same' effect upon 
the country that holds it, as upon the man who 
lives and labors only for that. It affects the land 
as it does the man. It leaves the heart barren 
without a flower of kindness — without a blossom 
of pity. 

The farmer in Illinois has the best soil — the 
greatest return for the least labor—more leisure — 



ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


189 


more time for enjoyment than any other farmer in 
the world. His hard work ceases with autumn. 
He has the long winters in which to become 
acquainted with his family — with his neighbors — 
in which to read and keep abreast with the 
advanced thought of his day. He has the time and 
means for self-culture. He has more time than the 
mechanic, the merchant or the professional man. 
If the farmer is not well informed it is his own 
fault. Books are cheap, and every farmer can have 
enough to give him the outline of every science, 
and an idea of all that has been accomplished by 
man. 

In many respects the farmer has the advantage 
of the mechanic. In our time we have plenty of 
mechanics but no tradesmen. In the sub-division 
of labor we have a thousand men working upon 
different parts of the same thing, each taught in 
one particular branch, and in only one. We have, 
say, in a shoe factory, hundreds of men, but not 
one shoemaker. It takes them all, assisted by a 
great number of machines, to make a shoe. Each 
does a particular part, and not one of them knows 
the entire trade. The result is that the moment the 
factory shuts down these men are out of employ- 



190 


ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


ment. Out of employment means out of bread — 
out of bread means famine and horror. The 
mechanic of to-day has but little independence. 
His prosperity often depends upon the good will of 
one man. He is liable to be discharged for a look, 
for a word. He lays by but little for his declining 
years. He is, at the best, the slave of capital. 

It is a thousand times better to be a whole 
farmer than part of a mechanic. It is better to till 
the ground and work for yourself than to be hired 
by corporations. Every man should endeavor to 
belong to himself. 

About seven hundred years ago, Kheyam, a 
Persian, said: “Why should a man who possesses 
a piece of bread securing life for two days, and 
who has a cup of water — why should such a man 
be commanded by another, and why should such a 
man serve another?” 

Young men should not be satisfied with a 
salary. Do not mortgage the possibilities of your 
future. Have the courage to take life as it comes, 
feast or famine. Think of hunting a gold mine for 
a dollar a day, and think of finding one for another 
man. How would you feel then? 

We are lacking in true courage, when, for fear 



ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


191 


of the future, we take the crusts and scraps and 
niggardly salaries of the present. I had a thousand 
times rather have a farm and be independent, than 
to be President of the United States without inde¬ 
pendence, filled with doubt and trembling, feeling 
of the popular pulse, resorting to art and artifice, 
enquiring about the wind of opinion, and suc¬ 
ceeding at last in losing my self respect without 
gaining the respect of others. 

Man needs more manliness, more real indepen¬ 
dence. We must take care of ourselves. This 
we can do by labor, and in this way we can 
preserve our independence. We should try and 
choose that business or profession the pursuit of 
which will give us the most happiness. Happiness 
is wealth. We can be happy without being rich — 
without holding office—without being famous. I 
am not sure that we can be happy with wealth, 
with office, or with fame. 

There is a quiet about the life of a farmer, and 
the hope of a serene old age, that no other business 
or profession can promise. A professional man is 
doomed sometime to feel that his powers are 
waning. He is doomed to see younger and 
stronger men pass him in the race of life. He 



192 


ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


looks forward to an old age of intellectual medioc¬ 
rity. He will be last where once he was the first. 
But the farmer goes, as it were, into partnership 
with nature — he lives with trees and flowers — 
he breathes the sweet air of the fields. There is 
no constant and frightful strain upon his mind. 
His nights are filled with sleep and rest. 
He watches his flocks and herds as they feed 
upon the green and sunny slopes. He hears the 
pleasant rain falling upon the waving corn, and the 
trees he planted in youth rustle above him as he 
plants others for the children yet to be. 

Our country is filled with the idle and unem¬ 
ployed, and the great question asking for an 
answer is: What shall be done with these men? 
What shall these men do? To this there is but 
one answer: They must cultivate the soil. Farm¬ 
ing must be rendered more attractive. Those who 
work the land must have an honest pride in their 
business. They must educate their children to 
cultivate the soil. They must make farming easier, 
so that their children will not hate it — so that they 
will not hate it themselves. The boys must not be 
taught that tilling the ground is a curse and almost 
a disgrace. They must not suppose that education 



ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


193 


is thrown away upon them unless they become 
ministers, merchants, lawyers, doctors, or states¬ 
men. It must be understood that education can 
be used to advantage on a farm. We must get rid 
of the idea that a little learning unfits one for work. 
There is no real conflict between Latin and labor. 
There are hundreds of graduates of Yale and 
Harvard and other colleges, who are agents of 
sewing machines, solicitors for insurance, clerks, 
copyists, in short, performing a hundred varieties 
of menial service. They seem willing to do any¬ 
thing that is not regarded as work — anything: 
that can be done in a town, in the house, in 
an office, but they avoid farming as they would a 
leprosy. Nearly every young man educated in this 
way is simply ruined. Such an education ought to 
be called ignorance. It is a thousand times better 
to have common sense without education, than 
education without the sense. Boys and girls 
should be educated to help themselves. They 
should be taught that it is disgraceful to be idle, 
and dishonorable to be useless. 

I say again, if you want more men and women 
on the farms, something must be done to make 
farm life pleasant. One great difficulty is that the 
13 



194 


ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


farm is lonely. People write about the pleasures 
of solitude, but they are found only in books. He 
who lives long alone becomes insane. A hermit is 
a madman. Without friends and wife and child, 
there is nothing left worth living for. The unsocial 
are the enemies of joy. They are filled with 
egotism and envy, with vanity and hatred. People 
who live much alone become narrow and suspicious. 
They are apt to be the property of one ide.a. They 
begin to think there is no use in anything. They 
look upon the happiness of others as a kind of 
folly. They hate joyous folks, because, way down 
in their hearts, they envy them. 

In our country, farm-life is too lonely. The 
farms are large, and neighbors are too far apart. 
In these days, when the roads are filled with 
“tramps,” the wives and children need protection. 
When the farmer leaves home and goes to some 
distant field to work, a shadow of fear is upon his 
heart all day, and a like shadow rests upon all at 
home. 

In the early settlement of our country the 
pioneer was forced to take his family, his axe, his 
dog and his gun, and go into the far wild forest, 
and build his cabin miles and miles from 


any 



ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


195 


neighbor. He saw the smoke from his hearth go 
up alone in all the wide and lonely sky. 

But this necessity has passed away, and now, 
instead of living so far apart upon the lonely farms, 
you should live in villages. With the improved 
machinery which you have — with your generous 
soil — with your markets and means of transporta¬ 
tion, you can now afford to live together. 

It is not necessary in this age of the world for 
the farmer to rise in the middle of the night and 
begin his work. This getting up so early in the 
morning is a relic of barbarism. It has made 
hundreds and thousands of young men curse the 
business. There is no need of getting up at three 
or four o’clock in the winter morning. The farmer 
who persists in doing it and persists in dragging 
his wife and children from their beds ought to be 
visited by a missionary. It is time enough to rise 
after the sun has set the example. For what 
purpose do you get up? To feed the cattle? 
Why not feed them more the night before? It is 
a waste of life. In the old times they used to get 
up about three o’clock in the morning, and go to 
work long before the sun had risen with “heal¬ 
ing upon his wings,” and as a just punishment they 



196 


ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


all had the ague; and they ought to have it now. 
The man who cannot get a living upon Illinois soil 
without rising before daylight ought to starve. 
Eight hours a day is enough for any farmer to 
work except in harvest time. When you rise at 
four and work till dark what is life worth ? Of 

what use are all the improvements in farming? Of 

what use is all the improved machinery unless it 

tends to give the farmer a little more leisure? 

What is harvesting now, compared with what 
it was in the old time? Think of the days of 
reaping, of cradling, of raking and binding and 
mowing. Think of threshing with the flail and 
winnowing with the wind. And now think of the 
reapers and mowers, the binders and threshing 
machines, the plows and cultivators, upon which 
the farmer rides protected from the sun. If, with 
all these advantages, you cannot get a living with¬ 
out rising in the middle of the night, go into some 
other business. You should not rob your families 
of sleep. Sleep is the best medicine in the world. 
It is the best doctor upon the earth. There is no 
such thing as health without plenty of sleep. 
Sleep until you are thoroughly rested and restored. 
When you work, work; and when you get through 
take a good, long, and refreshing rest. 



ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


197 


You should live in villages, so that you can 
have the benefits of social life. You can have a 
reading-room — you can take the best papers and 
magazines — you can have plenty of books, and 
each one can have the benefit of them all. Some 
of the young men and women can cultivate music. 
You can have social gatherings—you can learn 
from each other—you can discuss all topics of 
interest, and in this way you can make farming a 
delightful business. You must keep up with the 
age. The way to make farming respectable is for 
farmers to become really intelligent. They must 
live intelligent and happy lives. They must know 
something of books and something of what is going 
on in the world. They must not be satisfied with 
knowing something of the affairs of a neighbor¬ 
hood and nothing about the rest of the earth. The 
business must be made attractive, and it never can 
be until the farmer has prosperity, intelligence and 
leisure. 

Another thing—I am a believer in fashion. It 
is the duty of every woman to make herself as 
beautiful and attractive as she possibly can. 

“Handsome is as handsome does,” but she is 
much handsomer if well dressed. Every man 




198 


ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


should look his very best. I am a believer in good 
clothes. The time never ought to come in this 
country when you can tell a farmer’s wife or 
daughter simply by the garments she wears. I say 
to every girl and woman, no matter what the 
material of your dress may be, no matter how 
cheap and coarse it is, cut it and make it in the 
fashion. I believe in jewelry. Some people look 
upon it as barbaric, but in my judgment, wearing 
jewelry is the first evidence the barbarian gives of 
a wish to be civilized. To adorn ourselves seems 
to be a part of our nature, and this desire seems to 
be everywhere and in everything. I have some¬ 
times thought that the desire for beauty covers the 
earth with flowers. It is this desire that paints the 
wings of moths, tints the chamber of the shell, 
and gives the bird its plumage and its song. Oh 
daughters and wives, if you would be loved, adorn 
yourselves — if you would be adored, be beautiful! 

There is another fault common with the farmers 
of our country—they want too much land. You 
cannot, at present, when taxes are high, afford to 
own land that you do not cultivate. Sell it and let 
others make farms and homes. In this way what 
you keep will be enhanced in value. Farmers 



ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


199 


ought to own the land they cultivate, and cultivate 
what they own. Renters can hardly be called 
farmers. There can be no such thing in the high¬ 
est sense as a home unless you own it. There 
must be an incentive to plant trees, to beautify the 
grounds, to preserve and improve. It elevates a 
man to own a home. It gives a certain indepen¬ 
dence, a force of character that is obtained in no 
other way. A man without a home feels like a 
passenger. There is in such a man a little of the 
vagrant. Homes make patriots. He who has sat 
by his own fireside with wife and children will 
defend it. When he hears the word country pro¬ 
nounced, he thinks of his home. 

Few men have been patriotic enough to shoul¬ 
der a musket in defence of a boarding house. 

The prosperity and glory of our country depend 
upon the number of our people who are the owners 
of homes. Around the fireside cluster the private 
and the public virtues of our race. Raise your 
sons to be independent through labor — to pursue 
some business for themselves and upon their own 
account — to be self-reliant—to act upon their own 
responsibility, and to take the consequences like 
men. Teach them above all things to be good, 



200 


ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


true and tender husbands — winners of love and 
builders of homes. 

A great many farmers seem to think that they 
are the only laborers in the world. This is a very 
foolish thing. Farmers cannot get along without 
the mechanic. You are not independent of the 
man of genius. Your prosperity depends upon the 
inventor. The world advances by the assistance of 
all laborers; and all labor is under obligations to 
the inventions of genius. The inventor does as 
much for agriculture as he who tills the soil. All 
laboring men should be brothers. You are in part¬ 
nership with the mechanics who make your reapers, 
your mowers and your plows; and you should take 
into your granges all the men who make their 
living by honest labor. The laboring people should 
unite and should protect themselves against all 
idlers. You can divide mankind into two classes: 
the laborers and the idlers, the supporters and the 
supported, the honest and the dishonest. Every 
man is dishonest who lives upon the unpaid labor 
of others, no matter if he occupies a throne. All 
laborers should be brothers. The laborers should 
have equal rights before the world and before the 
law. And I want every farmer to consider every 



ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


201 


man who labors either with hand or brain as his 
brother. Until genius and labor formed a partner¬ 
ship there was no such thing as prosperity among 
men. Every reaper and mower, every agricultural 
implement, has elevated the work of the farmer, 
and his vocation grows grander with every inven¬ 
tion. In the olden time the agriculturist was 
ignorant; he knew nothing of machinery, he was 
the slave of superstition. He was always trying to 
appease some imaginary power by fasting and 
prayer. He supposed that some being actuated 
by malice, sent the untimely frost, or swept away 
with the wild wind his rude abode. To him the 
seasons were mysteries. The thunder told him of 
an enraged god—the barren fields of the vengeance 
of heaven. The tiller of the soil lived in perpetual 
and abject fear. He knew nothing of mechanics, 
nothing of order, nothing of law, nothing of cause 
and effect. He was a superstitious savage. He 
invented prayers instead of plows, creeds instead of 
reapers and mowers. He was unable to devote all 
his time to the gods, and so he hired others to 
assist him, and for their influence with the gentle¬ 
men supposed to control the weather, he gave 
one-tenth of all he could produce. 



202 


ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


The farmer has been elevated through science 
and he should not forget the debt he owes to the 
mechanic, to the inventor, to the thinker. He 
should remember that all laborers belong to the 
same grand family — that they are the real kings 
and queens, the only true nobility. 

Another idea entertained by most farmers is 
that they are in some mysterious way oppressed 
by every other kind of business — that they are 
devoured by monopolies, especially by railroads. 

Of course, the railroads are indebted to the 
farmers for their prosperity, and the farmers are 
indebted to the railroads. Without them Illinois 
would be almost worthless. 

A few years ago you endeavored to regulate 
the charges of railroad companies. The principal 
complaint you had was that they charged too much 
for the transportation of corn and other cereals to 
the East. You should remember that all freights 
are paid by the consumer; and that it made little 
difference to you what the railroad charged for 
transportation to the East, as that transportation 
had to be paid by the consumers of the grain. 
You were really interested in transportation from 
the East to the West and in local freights. The 




ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


203 


result is that while you have put down through 
freights you have not succeeded so well in local 
freights. The exact opposite should be the policy 
of Illinois. Put down local freights; put them 
down, if you can, to the lowest possible figure, and 
let through rates take care of themselves. If all 
the corn raised in Illinois could be transported to 
New York absolutely free, it would enhance but 
little the price that you would receive. What we 
want is the lowest possible local rate. Instead of 
this you have simply succeeded in helping the East 
at the expense of the West. The railroads are 
your friends. They are your partners. They can 
prosper only where the country through which 
they run prospers. Ail intelligent railroad men 
know this. They know that present robbery is 
future bankruptcy. They know that the interest 
of the farmer and of the railroad is the same. 
We must have railroads. What can we do with¬ 
out them? 

When we had no railroads, we drew, as I said 
before, our grain two hundred miles to market. 

In those days the farmers did not stop at hotels. 
They slept under their wagons — took with them 
their food — fried their own bacon, made their 



204 


ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


coffee, and ate their meals in the snow and rain. 
Those were the days when they received ten cents 
a bushel for corn — when they sold four bushels of 
potatoes for a quarter—thirty-three dozen eggs 
for a dollar, and a hundred pounds of pork for a 
dollar and a half. 

What has made the difference? 

The railroads came to your door and they 
brought with them the markets of the world. 
They brought New York and Liverpool and Lon¬ 
don into Illinois, and the state has been clothed 
with prosperity as with a mantle. It is the interest 
of the farmer to protect every great interest in the 
state. You should feel proud that Illinois has 
more railroads than any other state in this Union. 
Her main tracks and side tracks would furnish iron 
enough to belt the globe. In Illinois there are ten 
thousand miles of railways. In these iron high¬ 
ways more than three hundred million dollars have 
been invested — a sum equal to ten times the 
original cost of all the land in the state. To make 
war upon the railroads is a short-sighted and 
suicidal policy. They should be treated fairly and 
should be taxed by the same standard that farms 
are taxed, and in no other way. If we wish to 



ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


205 


prosper we must act together, and we must see to 
it that every form of labor is protected. 

There has been a long period of depression in 
all business. The farmers have suffered least of 
all. Your land is just as rich and productive as 
ever. Prices have been reasonable. The towns 
and cities have suffered. Stocks and bonds have 
shrunk from par to worthless paper. Princes have 
become paupers, and bankers, merchants and 
millionaires have passed into the oblivion of bank¬ 
ruptcy. The period of depression is slowly passing 
away, and we are entering upon better times. 

A great many people say that a scarcity of 
money is our only difficulty. In my opinion we 
have money enough, but we lack confidence in 
each other and in the future. 

There has been so much dishonesty, there have 
been so many failures, that the people are afraid to 
trust anybody. There is plenty of money, but 
there seems to be a scarcity of business. If you 
were to go to the owner of a ferry, and, upon 
seeing his boat lying high and dry on the shore, 
should say, “There is a superabundance of ferry¬ 
boat,” he would probably reply, “ No, but there is 
a scarcity of water.” So with us there is not a 



206 


ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


scarcity of money, but there is a scarcity of busi¬ 
ness. And this scarcity springs from lack of 
confidence in one another. So many presidents of 
savings banks, even those belonging to the Young 
Men’s Christian Association, run off with the funds; 
so many railroad and insurance companies are in 
the hands of receivers; there is so much bank¬ 
ruptcy on every hand, that all capital is held in the 
nervous clutch of fear. Slowly, but surely we are 
coming back to honest methods in business. Con¬ 
fidence will return, and then enterprise will unlock 
the safe and money will again circulate as of yore ; 
the dollars will leave their hiding places and every 
one will be seeking investment. 

For my part, I do not ask any interference on 
the part of the government except to undo the 
wrong it has done. I do not ask that money be 
made out of nothing. I do not ask for the pros¬ 
perity born of paper. But I do ask for the remon¬ 
etization of silver. Silver was demonetized by 
fraud. It was an imposition upon every solvent 
man; a fraud upon every honest debtor in the 
United States. It assassinated labor. It was done 
in the interest of avarice and greed, and should be 
undone by honest men. 



ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 207 


The farmers should vote only for such men as 
are able and willing to guard and advance the 
interests of labor. We should know better than to 
vote for men who will deliberately put a tariff of 
three dollars a thousand upon Canada lumber, 
when every farmer in Illinois is a purchaser of 
lumber. People who live upon the prairies ought 
to vote for cheap lumber. We should protect 
ourselves. We ought to have intelligence enough 
to know what we want and how to get it. The 
real laboring men of this country can succeed if 
they are united. By laboring men, I do not mean 
only the farmers. I mean all who contribute in 
some way to the general welfare. They should 
forget prejudices and party names, and remember 
only the best interests of the people. Let us see 
if we cannot, in Illinois, protect every department 
of industry. Let us see if all property cannot be 
protected alike and taxed alike, whether owned by 
individuals or corporations. 

Where industry creates and justice protects, 
prosperity dwells. 

Let me tell you something more about Illinois: 
We have fifty-six thousand square miles of land — 
nearly thirty-six million acres. Upon these plains 



208 


ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


we can raise enough to feed and clothe twenty 
million people. Beneath these prairies were hidden 
millions of ages ago, by that old miser, the sun, 
thirty-six thousand square miles of coal. The 
aggregate thickness of these veins is at least fifteen 
feet. Think of a column of coal one mile square 
and one hundred miles high! All this came from 
the sun. What a sunbeam such a column would 
be! Think of the engines and machines this coal 
will run and tufn and whirl! Think of all this 
force, willed and left to us by the dead morning of 
the world! Think of the firesides of the future 
around which will sit the fathers, mothers and 
children of the years to be! Think of the sweet 
and happy faces, the loving and tender eyes that 
will glow and gleam in the sacred light of all these 
flames! 

We have the best country in the world, and 
Illinois is the best state in that country. Is there 
any reason that our farmers should not be prosper¬ 
ous and happy men ? They have every advantage, 
and within their reach are all the comforts and 
conveniences of life. 

Do not get the land fever and think you must 
buy all that joins you. Get out of debt as soon as 



ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


209 


you possibly can. A mortgage casts a shadow on 
the sunniest field. There is no business under the 
sun that can pay ten per cent. 

Ainsworth R. Spofford gives the following facts 
about interest: “One dollar loaned for one hundred 
years at six per'cent., with the interest collected 
annually and added to the principal, will amount to 
three hundred and forty dollars. At eight per 
cent, it amounts to two thousand two hundred and 
three dollars. At three per cent, it amounts only 
to nineteen dollars and twenty-five cents. At ten 
per cent, it is thirteen thousand eight hundred and 
nine dollars, or about seven hundred times as much.. 
At twelve per cent, it amounts to eighty-four thou¬ 
sand and seventy-five dollars, or more than four 
thousand times as much. At eighteen per cent, it 
amounts to fifteen million one hundred and forty- 
five thousand and seven dollars. At twenty-four 
per cent, (which we sometimes hear talked of) it 
reaches the enormous sum of two billion five hund¬ 
red and fifty-one million seven hundred and ninety- 
nine thousand four hundred and four dollars.” 

One dollar at compound interest, at twenty-four 
per cent., for one hundred years, would produce a 
sum equal to our national debt. 

14 



210 


ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


Interest eats night and day, and the more it 
eats the hungrier it grows. The farmer in debt, 
lying awake at night, can, if he listens, hear it 
gnaw. If he owes nothing, he can hear his corn 
grow. Get out of debt as soon as you possibly 
can. You have supported idle avarice and lazy 
economy long enough. 

Above all let every farmer treat his wife and 
children with infinite kindness. Give your sons 
and daughters every advantage within your power. 
In the air of kindness they will grow about you 
like flowers. They will fill your homes with sun¬ 
shine and all your years with joy. Do not try to 
rule by force. A blow from a parent leaves a scar 
on the soul. I should feel ashamed to die sur¬ 
rounded by children I had whipped. Think of 
feeling upon your dying lips the kiss of a child you 
had struck. 

See to it that your wife has every convenience. 
Make her life worth living. Never allow her to 
become a servant. Wives, weary and worn, 
mothers, wrinkled and bent before their time, fill 
homes with grief and shame. If you are not able 
to hire help for your wives, help them yourselves. 
See that they have the best utensils to work with. 



ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


211 


Women cannot create things by magic. Have 
plenty of wood and coal — good cellars and plenty 
in them. Have cisterns, so that you can have 
plenty of rain water for washing. Do not rely on 
a barrel and a board. When the rain comes the 
board will be lost or the hoops will be off the 
barrel. 

Farmers should live like princes. Eat the best 
things you raise and sell the rest. Have good 
things to cook and good things to cook with. Of 
all people in our country, you should live the best. 
Throw your miserable little stoves out of the win¬ 
dow. Get ranges, and have them so built that 
your wife need not burn her face off to get you a 
breakfast. Do not make her cook in a kitchen hot 
as the orthodox perdition. The beef, not the cook, 
should be roasted. It is just as easy to have 
things convenient and right as to have them any 
other way. 

Cooking is one of the fine arts. Give your 
wives and daughters things to cook, and things 
to cook with, and they will soon become most 
excellent cooks. Good cooking is the basis of 
civilization. The man whose arteries and veins are 
filled with rich blood made of good and well 



212 


ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


cooked food, has pluck, courage, endurance and 
and noble impulses. The inventor of a good soup 
did more for his race than the maker of any creed. 
The doctrines of total depravity and endless pun¬ 
ishment were born of bad cooking and dyspepsia. 
Remember that your wife should have the things 
to cook with. 

In the good old days there would be eleven 
children in the family and only one skillet. Every¬ 
thing was broken or cracked or loaned or lost. 

There ought to be a law making it a crime, 
punishable by imprisonment, to fry beefsteak. 
Broil it; it is just as easy, and when broiled it is 
delicious. Fried beefsteak is not fit for a wild 
beast. You can broil even on a stove. Shut the 
front damper — open the back one — then take off 
a griddle. There will then be a draft downwards 
through this opening. Put on your steak, using a 
wire broiler, and not a particle of smoke will touch 
it, for the reason that the smoke goes down. If 
you try to broil it with the front damper open, the 
smoke will rise. For broiling, coal, even soft coal, 
makes a better fire than wood. 

There is no reason why farmers should not have 
fresh meat all the year round. There is certainly 



ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


213 


no sense in stuffing yourself full of salt meat every 
morning, and making a well or a cistern of your 
stomach for the rest of the day. Every farmer 
should have an ice house. Upon or near every 
farm is some stream from which plenty of ice can 
be obtained, and the long summer days made de¬ 
lightful. Dr. Draper, one of the world’s greatest 
scientists, says that ice water is healthy, and that 
it has done away with many of the low forms of 
fever in the great cities. Ice has become one of 
the necessaries of civilized life, and without it there 
is very little comfort. 

Make your homes pleasant. Have your houses 
warm and comfortable for the winter. Do not build 
a story-and-a-half house. The half story is sim¬ 
ply an oven in which, during the summer, you will 
bake every night, and feel in the morning as though 
only the rind of yourself was left. 

Decorate your rooms, even if you do so with 
cheap engravings. The cheapest are far better 
than none. Have books — have papers, and read 
them. You have more leisure than the dwellers in 
cities. Beautify your grounds with plants and flow¬ 
ers and vines. Have good gardens. Remember 
that everything of beauty tends to the elevation of 



214 


ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


man. Every little morning-glory whose purple 
bosom is thrilled with the amorous kisses of the 
sun, tends to put a blossom in your heart. Do not 
judge of the value of everything by the market 
reports. Every flower about a house certifies to 
the refinement of somebody. Every vine climbing 
and blossoming, tells of love and joy. 

Make your houses comfortable. Do not huddle 
together in a little room around a red-hot stove, 
with every window fastened down. Do not live in 
this poisoned atmosphere, and then, when one of 
your children dies, put a piece in the papers com¬ 
mencing with, “Whereas, it has pleased divine 
Providence to remove from our midst—.” Have 
plenty of air, and plenty of warmth. Comfort is 
health. Do not imagine anything is unhealthy 
simply because it is pleasant.' That is an old and 
foolish idea. 

Let your children sleep. Do not drag them 
from their beds in the darkness of night. Do not 
compel them to associate all that is tiresome, irk¬ 
some and dreadful with cultivating the soil. In 
this way you bring farming into hatred and disre¬ 
pute. Treat your children with infinite kindness — 
treat them as equals. There is no happiness in a 



ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


215 


home not filled with love. Where the husband 
hates his wife—.where the wife hates the husband; 
where children hate their parents and each other — 
there is a hell upon earth.] 

There is no reason why farmers should not be 
the kindest and most cultivated of men. There is 
nothing in plowing the fields to make men cross, 
cruel and crabbed. To look upon the sunny slopes 
covered with daisies does not tend to make men 
unjust. Whoever labors for the happiness of those 
he loves',' - elevates himself, no matter whether he 
works in the dark and dreary shops, or in The 
perfumed fields. To work for others is, in reality, 
the only way in which a man can work for himself. 
Selfishness is ignorance. Speculators cannot make 
unless somebody loses. In the realm of specula¬ 
tion, every success has at least one victim. The 
harvest reaped by the farmer benefits all and injures 
none. For him to succeed, it is not necessary that 
some one should fail. The same is true of all 
producers — of all laborers. 

I can imagine no condition that carries with it 
it such a promise of joy as that of the farmer in 
the early winter. He has his cellar filled — he has 
made every preparation for the days of snow and 



21G 


ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


storm — he looks forward to three months of ease 
and rest; to three months of fireside - content; 
three months with wife and children; three months 
of long, delightful evenings; three months of home ; 
three months of solid comfort. 

When the life of the farmer is such as I have 
described, the cities and towns will not be filled 
with want — the streets will not be crowded with 
wrecked rogues, broken bankers, and bankrupt 
speculators. The fields will be tilled, and country 
villages, almost hidden by trees and vines and 
flowers, filled with industrious and happy people, 
will nestle in every vale and gleam like gems on 
every plain. 

The idea must be done away with that there is 
something intellectually degrading in cultivating 
the soil. Nothing can be nobler than to be useful. 
Idleness should not be respectable. 

If farmers will cultivate well, and without waste ; 
if they will so build that their houses will be warm 
in winter and cool in summer; if they will plant 
trees and beautify their homes; if they will occupy 
their leisure in reading, in thinking, in improving 
their minds and in devising ways and means to 
make their business profitable and pleasant; if 




ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


217 


they will live nearer together and cultivate socia¬ 
bility ; if they will come together often; if they 
will have reading rooms and cultivate music; if 
they will have bath-rooms, ice-houses and good 
gardens; if their wives can have an easy time; if 
their sons and daughters can have an opportunity 
to keep in line with the thoughts and dis¬ 
coveries of the world; if the nights can be taken 
for sleep and the evenings for enjoyment, every¬ 
body will be in love with the fields. Happiness 
should be the object of life, and if life on the farm 
can be made really happy, the children will grow 
up in love with the meadows, the streams, the 
woods and the old home. Around the farm will 
cling and cluster the happy memories of the de- 
lighful years. 

Remember, I pray you, that you are in partner¬ 
ship with all labor — that you should join hands 
with all the sons and daughters of toil, and that all 
who work belong to the same noble family. 

For my part, I envy the man who has lived on 
the same broad acres from his boyhood, who culti¬ 
vates the fields where in youth he played, and lives 
where his father lived and died. 

I can imagine no sweeter way to end one’s life 




218 


ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 


than in the quiet of the country, out of the mad 
race for money, place and power—far from the 
demands of business — out of the dusty highway 
where fools struggle and strive for the hollow praise 
of other fools. 



Surrounded by pleasant fields and faithful 
friends, by those I have loved, I hope to end my 
days. And this I hope may be the lot of all who 
hear my voice. I hope that you, in the country, in 
houses covered with vines and clothed with flowers, 
looking from the open window upon rustling fields 
of corn and wheat, over which will run the sunshine 
and the shadow, surrounded by those whose lives 
you have filled with joy, will pass away serenely as 
the Autumn dies. 

















I 








SPEECH AT CINCINNATI. 

















SPEECH AT CINCINNATI. 


NOMINATING JAMES G. BLAINE FOR THE PRESIDENCY, 
JUNE, 1876. 


M assachusetts may be satisfied with 

the loyalty of Benjamin H. Bristow; so am 
I; but if any man nominated by this convention 
can not carry the State of Massachusetts, I am not 
satisfied with the loyalty of that State. If the 
nominee of this convention can not carry the grand 
old Commonwealth of Massachusetts by seventy- 
five thousand majority, I would advise them to sell 
out Faneuil Hall as a Democratic headquarters. I 
would advise them to take from Bunker Hill that 
old monument of glory. 

The Republicans of the United States demand 
as their leader in the great contest of 1876 a man 
of intelligence, a man of integrity, a man of well- 
known and approved political opinions. They de¬ 
mand a statesman; they demand a reformer after 




POLITICAL ADDRESSES. 


222 

as well as before the election. They demand a 
politician in the highest, broadest and best sense — 
a man of superb moral courage. They demand a 
man acquainted with public affairs — with the wants 
of the people; with not only the requirements of 
the hour, but with the demands of the future. 
They demand a man broad enough to comprehend 
the relations of this government to the other 
nations of the earth. They demand a man well 
versed in the powers, duties, and prerogatives of 
-each and every department of this government. 
They demand a man who will sacredly preserve the 
financial honor of the United States; one who 
knows enough to know that the national debt must 
be paid through the prosperity of this people; one 
who knows enough to know that all the financial 
theories in the world cannot redeem a single dol¬ 
lar ; one who knows enough to know that all the 
money must be made, not by law, but by labor; 
one who knows enough to know that the people of 
the United States have the industry to make the 
money, and the honor to pay it over just as fast as 
they make it. 

The Republicans of the United States demand 
a man who knows that prosperity and resumption, 



POLITICAL ADDRESSES. 


223 


when they come, must come together; that when 
they come, they will come hand in hand through 
the golden harvest fields; hand in hand by the 
whirling spindles and the turning wheels; hand in 
hand past the open furnace doors; hand in hand by 
the flaming forges; hand in hand by the chimneys 
filled with eager fire, greeted and grasped by the 
countless sons of toil. 

This money has to be dug out of the earth. 
You can not make it by passing resolutions in a 
political convention. 

The Republicans of the United States want a 
man who knows that this government should pro¬ 
tect every citizen, at home and abroad; who knows 
that any government that will not defend its 
defenders, and protect its protectors, is a disgrace 
to the map of the world. They demand a man 
who believes in the eternal separation and divorce¬ 
ment of church and school. They demand a man 
whose political reputation is spotless as a star; but 
they do not demand that their candidate shall have 
a certificate of moral character signed by a confed¬ 
erate congress. The man who has, in full, heaped 
and rounded measure, all these splendid qualifica¬ 
tions, is the present grand and gallant leader of 
the Republican party —James G. Blaine. 



224 


POLITICAL ADDRESSES. 


Our country, crowned with the vast and mar¬ 
velous achievements of its first century, asks for a 
man worthy of the past, and prophetic of her 
future; asks for a man who has the audacity of 
genius; asks for a man who is the grandest combi¬ 
nation of heart, conscience and brain beneath her 
flag — such a man is James G. Blaine. 

For the Republican host, led by this intrepid 
man, there can be no defeat. 

This is a grand year—a year filled with the 
recollections of the Revolution; filled with proud 
and tender memories of the past; with the sacred 
legends of liberty — a year in which the sons of 
freedom will drink from the fountains of enthu¬ 
siasm ; a year in which the people call for a man 
who has preserved in Congress what our soldiers 
won upon the field; a year in which they call for 
the man who has torn from the throat of treason 
the tongue of slander — for the man who has 
snatched the mask of Democracy from the hideous 
face of rebellion; for the man who, like an intel¬ 
lectual athlete, has stood in the arena of debate 
and challenged all comers, and who is still a total 
stranger to defeat. 

Like an armed warrior, like a plumed knight, 



POLITICAL ADDRESSES. 


225 


James G. Blaine marched down the halls of the 
American Congress and threw his shining lance full 
and fair against the brazen foreheads of the de- 
famers of his country and the maligners of his 
honor. For the Republican party to desert this 
gallant leader now, is as though an army should 
desert their general upon the field of battle. 

James G. Blaine is now and has been for years 
the bearer of the sacred standard of the Republican 
party. I call it sacred, because no human being 
can stand beneath its folds without becoming and 
without remaining free. 

Gentlemen of the convention, in the name of 
the great Republic, the only Republic that ever 
existed upon this earth; in the name of all her 
defenders and of all her supporters; in the name 
of all her soldiers living; in the name of all her 
soldiers dead upon the field of battle, and in the 
name of those who perished in the skeleton clutch 
of famine at Andersonville and Libby, whose suffer¬ 
ings he so vividly remembers, Illinois — Illinois 
nominates for the next President of this country, 
that prince of parliamentarians—that leader of 
leaders — James G. Blaine. 






‘‘THE PAST RISES BEFORE ME 


LIKE A DREAM. 








“THE PAST RISES BEFORE ME 


LIKE A DREAM.” 


EXTRACT FROM A SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE SOLDIERS* 
REUNION AT INDIANAPOLIS, SEPT. 21, 1876. 


T HE past rises before me like a dream. Again 
we are in the great struggle for national 
life. We hear the sounds of preparation — the 
music of boisterous drums — the silver voices of 
heroic bugles. We see thousands of assemblages, 
and hear the appeals of orators; we see the pale 
cheeks of women, and the flushed faces of men; 
and in those assemblages we see all the dead 
whose dust we have covered with flowers. We 
lose sight of them no more. We are with them 
when they enlist in the great army of freedom. 
We see them part with those they love. Some are 
walking for the last time in quiet, woody places, 
with the maidens they adore. We hear the whis- 




230 


POLITICAL ADDRESSES. 


perings and the sweet vows of eternal love as they 
lingeringly part forever. Others are bending over 
cradles, kissing babes that are asleep. Some are 
receiving the blessings of old men. Some are 
parting with mothers who hold them and press 
them to their hearts again and again, and say 
nothing. Kisses and tears, tears and kisses — 
divine mingling of agony and love! And some 
are talking with wives, and endeavoring with brave 
words, spoken in the old tones, to drive from their 
hearts the awful fear. We see them part. We 
see the wife standing in the door with the babe in 
her arms—standing in the sunlight sobbing—at 
the turn of the road a hand waves — she answers 
by holding high in her loving arms the child. He 
is gone, and forever. 

We see them all as they march proudly away 
under the flaunting flags, keeping time to the 
grand, wild music of war — marching down the 
streets of the great cities—through the towns and 
across the prairies—down to the fields of glory, to 
do and to die for the eternal right. 

We go with them, one and all. We are by 
their side on all the gory fields—in all the hospitals 
of pain — on all the weary marches. We stand 



POLITICAL ADDRESSES. 


231 


guard with them in the wild storm and under the 
quiet stars. We are with them in ravines running 
with blood — in the furrows of old fields. We are 
with them between contending hosts, unable to 
move, wild with thirst, the life ebbing slowly away 
among the withered leaves. We see them pierced 
by balls and torn with shells, in the trenches, by 
forts, and in -the whirlwind of the charge, where 
men become iron, with nerves of steel. 

We are with them in the prisons of hatred and 
famine; but human speech can never tell what they 
endured. 

We are at home when the news comes that 
they are dead. We see the maiden in the shadow 
of her first sorrow. We see the silvered head of 
the old man bowed with the last grief. 

The past rises before us, and we see four 
millions of human beings governed by the lash — 
we see them bound hand and foot — we hear the 
strokes of cruel whips — we see the hounds track¬ 
ing women through tangled swamps. We see 
babes sold from the breasts of mothers. Cruelty 
unspeakable ! Outrage infinite! 

Four million bodies in chains—four million 
souls in fetters. All the sacred relations of wife, 



232 


POLITICAL ADDRESSES . 


mother, father and child trampled beneath the 
brutal feet of might. And all this was done under 
our own beautiful banner of the free. 

The past rises before us. We hear the roar 
and shriek of the bursting shell. The broken fet¬ 
ters fall. These heroes died. We look. Instead 
of slaves we see men and women and children. 
The wand of progress touches the -auction-block, 
the slave-pen, the whipping-post, and we see homes 
and firesides and school-houses and books, and 
where all was want and crime and cruelty and fear 
we see the faces of the free. 

These heroes are dead. They died for liberty 
— they died for us. They are at rest. They sleep 
in the land they made free, under the flag they 
rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad 
hemlocks, the tearful willows, and the embracing 
vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of the 
clouds, careless alike of sunshine or of storm, each 
in the windowless palace of Rest. Earth may run 
red with other wars—they are at peace. In the 
midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they found 
the serenity of death. I have one sentiment for 
soldiers living and dead: Cheers for the living; 
tears for the dead. 





Over Twenty thousand copies of this book already sold. 


The Gods 

AND 

Other Lectures. 


By ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 


(_A j NEW edition of Ingersoll’s Lectures is now ready for distribu- 
fLJL tion. This edition contains “The Gods,” “Humboldt,” “Thomas 
Paine,” “ Individuality,” and “Heretics and Heresies.” These Lectures 
have just been revised, and many changes, additions, and corrections 
made by the author. 

This volume is handsomely printed on tinted paper, and substantially 
bound. 

These Lectures are the most radical ever delivered in the United 
States. The most important theological questions are discussed from 
a perfectly rational point of view. The existence of the supernatural 
is denied, and reason, observation, and experience are shown to be the 
«nly basis upon which man can securely build. 

There is an effort in these Lectures to drive from the heart the 
the shadow of superstition — to enable man to enjoy this life, and to 
do away with the tyranny of the Church. 

The author takes the ground that man belongs to himself; that each 
individual should, at all hazards, maintain his intellectual freedom; and 
reject with scorn every religion that demands the sacrifice of his indi¬ 
viduality. 

*#* Price, #1.50. A liberal discount to the Trade. 

C. P. FARRELL, Publisher, 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 





PREFACE. 





























































EXTRACTS FROM NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 


[From “The Chicago Times,” July 5, 1874.] 

One of the most remarkable books ever presented to the public is tha 
just issued by Col. Ingersoll. It is remarkable for many things: Its abil¬ 
ity, the spirit of fairness that pervades it, but above all, for its courage. 
It is also remarkable in another sense — no inherent quality, to be sure-— 
and that is, it marks an epoch in the world of thought, a new birth ; for 
this book, now everywhere read and reviewed on its merits, would have 

been met by a howl of execration but a simple ten* years ago. 

Col. Ingersoll is a man in earnest. He a man of power. The rarest gifts 
bountiful Nature now and then bestows on mortals, seldom more than one 
at a time, she lias showered on him in profusion. As an orator, he stands 
probably without an equal in the land ; as a writer, considering that close 
application to the law has given him little opportunity for practice, he is 
almost equal to himself as an orator; and this in the most comprehensive 
sense, for his efforts present a rare combination of force, pure diction, 
poetical imagery, comprehensive and. incisive reasoning, and a logic that 
is inexorable. But what gives most character to his style, and constitutes 
its .greatest charm, is its suggestiveness. Mr. Ingersoll never exhausts a 
subject. His lectures are strings of epigrams. . . . The absolute 

truth is unattainable for man. The nearest any of us will ever get to the 
great secret of our existence, is to be honest with ourselves. In this view, 
Robert G. Ingersoll is nearer finite truth than most men. 


[From “The Chicago Journal,” July 3, 1874.] 

One of the most superbly gotten-up books we have seen for many a day. 
This book belongs to a class of publications which challenge attention by 
boldness and strength. Every sentence is brilliant with the light of genius, 
and based on sincerity. It is probably the most radical book to be found 
in the whole range of theology. The issue joined by this volume is vital 
to every feature ot religion, and that all the more, because the moral tone 
is lofty. It is well for the cause of truth that no issue of ethics, politics, 
sociology, or personalities, is raised, or so much as suggested. The posi¬ 
tions taken must be met squarely if at all. . . The lecture on Humboldt 

shows a great wealth of knowledge, and a profound appreciation of what 
science has done for the world. . . The dominant idea of the volume 

is, Belief should rest on evidence. 




• [From “Tha St. Louis Republican," July it, 1874.J 
“The Gods, and Other Lectures,” by Robert G. L^ersoH, is a daring 
book. Many would call ; 1 a bad book; and yec it illustrates the grand 
principle of freedom of thought and opini l is perfectly decorous in 

language. The tree of life and knowledge still stands in the garden bear¬ 
ing fruit. Those who chose can eat oJ it; th s who are a . ry can 

let it It is a free lunch, just as it always was; and by the way 

humanity has shaken, and are continually pressing around ; t, we are con* 
stantly reminded of what a spunky little worn;,u or,r mother Eve was. 
There Is a rich mine of human nature in her, and its treasures are exhaust¬ 
less. Those who do not wish to read Mr. Ingersoll’s book about the Gods 
can let it alone, and those who wish to abuse it without reading have that 
privilege, for the press is as free to them as it was to him. . . . The 

book is written with great care and precision, and its coolness is something 
astonishing The motto on the title page is an index to the contents. It 
is- “Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than 
the dead calm of ignorance and faith. Banish me from Eden when you 
will, but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.” . . . 


[From “The Cincinnati Commercial,” July 11, 1874.] 

Robert G. Ingcrsojl, of Illinois, is recognized as one among the most 
brilliant of radical speakers and writers ; and he is very radical, as any one 
who hes road his lecture on “The Gods,” well knows. He does not mince 
matters. He discusses theological questions from a rational point of view, 
lie ignores the supernatural, and builds Upon the foundation of reason, 
observation, and experience. He takes the ground that man belongs to 
himself, must maintain his intellectual freedom, and reject every religion 
that demand:, the sacrifice of his individuality. 

The typography of this volume is superb. 


[From “The Spiritualist at Work.”] 

Colonel R. G. Ingersoll is one of the boldest and clearest thinkers of 
the age, and as an orator he has few rivals, and no superiors, in America. 
The book before us is, therefore, a work of great merit. It is full of the 
most radical and advanced thought, clothed in robes of purest eloquence. 
. . . It is a work upon which great care has been bestowed, and deep 

thought and profound scholarship expended, and it is destined to become 
standard. . . The Lectures on Humboldt and Paine are able reviews 

of those great representative thinkers, and valuable as historical and bio¬ 
graphical sketches. 
















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